


The Essence of the Equinox

by Metamorphiac



Category: Original Work
Genre: Diplomacy, Drama & Romance, Elemental Magic, Espionage, F/M, Family Drama, Fantasy, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gaslamp Fantasy, High Fantasy, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Negotiations, Original Universe, POV Multiple, Politics, Revenge, Royalty, Sexual Content, Women In Power, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-07-03 08:19:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 63,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15815070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metamorphiac/pseuds/Metamorphiac
Summary: For a millennium the empire of Vysteria has prospered on the forces of the five elements using them to pioneer an industrial age of technological might and economic prosperity. The Solarites ruled this at the centre, a facsimile of the gods, unchallenged, uncontested, unconquerable.But then the Occassi came, the botched results of a cosmic experiment, and with them they unleashed infernal forces of chaos and dark magic. The two waged war and the light triumphed and those in power were banished to the ends of the empire with the rest remaining being subjugated under imperial rule.To say this should've been the end would be an understatement but there is no true end to the games of those who embody the gods might play when all the world is their stage and its subjects their pawns.The Occassi Prince of Mortos is coming, rising up with a more fearsome army than ever before. And he will not stop until the very last Solarite is snuffed beneath his boot.





	1. Aubade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unhealed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unhealed/gifts), [voxel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxel/gifts), [DeadSexy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadSexy/gifts).



> Reposting this on here because I don't like wattpad lol. 
> 
> If I forgot to include you it's because I don't know/can't remember what your username was if you have an account on here. I turned off anon viewing because that suits my comfort level but I'll turn it off if any of you need me to!
> 
> As before updates will be sporadic if they happen at all, this is meant to be more of a sampler and of course since it's a first draft expect it to be messy/inconsistent at some points as any of my fanfic would be.

The bathroom is a congestion of boiling vapour and orange-blossom water. There is an alcove behind the cavernous bath, it drips with dew, melting off the edges of the plaster mise en scene on the wall. There is a pile of white towels mounting on the cold mosaic floors.

The ladies cluster together like apricots on a platter and Laila Rose is the centrepiece, firstborn crowned, enveloped in the creamy, opulent lather of her bathwater. Her subjects bring her jellied raspberries which she caps onto the tips of her fingers and with soft hands and sharp nails they paint and peel her face with masks of orange-gold honey.

Eventually, she arises from the bath, gasping wisps of steam and studded with drops of diamond dew. How easily she emulates her ancestors then, star-stuck and constellation-threaded as they had been in the beginning times when they first emerged from the crystallised cradle of amaranthum, their skin incandescent, hair that bled molten starlight down their backs, their bodies carved like bronze or marble - like the pieces of art you were never allowed to touch.

They used to say it was that the magia who had stretched towards the stars with such love and longing, serenading them in their language of cast wishes, until one couldn’t help but reach back. And thus she fell, a body snatched from orbit, collapsing into a collision of heat and fire that cracked, like lightning, a crater through the soil and hollowed out a womb from which the Solarite grew.

And the magia, they brought them flowers and fruit, they brought them honey and wine, in exchange for just a speckle of their crystal dust, the amaranthum which would then go on to form the lifeblood that pumps through the veins of their homes, their factories, their farms.

Now Laila’s ladies swaddle her in mounds of white towels before she is escorted before the spectral gloom of the mirror. Here, they begin to paint her for performance for today was a day of festivity and finery, quite like all days in Soleterea, yet no Solarite would know a day as festive and as fine as this one, which stamped a millennium since they descended to earth and traded their celestial lives for mundane ones.

She is groped in silk-velvet, it is studded with jewels that sparkle like captive stars. Her hair bleeds gold down her shoulders, soon to be spiralled into calligraphic curls secured with more gems that rival her celestial counterparts. Enchanted hairpins make careful work of her sunlit tresses, imbued with the life to entangle themselves within her hair from the simple tap of a fingertip.

An excitement fizzled in her, not quite unlike sparkling nectar, for never before had she been standing at the precipice of a pageant quite this grand. She had barely passed her fiftieth earthday, practically an infant, a blink of the eye for her immortal counterparts, yet to a Vysterian she’d be a third way through her lifespan. Thus she still held the unblemished wonderment that only youth could provide, one that had not yet become overcast with the monotony of age.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Amalea,” she lavishes praise from lips stained berry-red to her foremost lady-in-waiting. The dress she had made was abyssal black, offset only by the twinkle of gemstones and the deep grooves in the neck and back that brazenly displayed her golden skin.

“You’re worth it,” Amalea whispers low into her ear and seals it with a chaste kiss to her cheek. Her jade-green eyes caught hers in the mirror as they traded the warmth of a smile. “Now I will leave you madamazelle, but I expect many letters and many calls until your valiant return,”

Laila takes up Amalea’s hands and presses them both to her lips to linger. She would miss her dear friend, her bubbling effervescence. Festivities for the millennium anniversary would take her cross-continent from the steaming jungles of Thalistan to the steep mountains of Aikha. She was excited for the prospect but weary also to face it without her ladies at her side, their frothing merriment.

“Just try to rid yourself of me,” Laila vows with a sly wink.

And then she was alone as the ladies began to pirouette out of the room like feathers off of a dandelion, leaving her to face the mirror and tuck a stray curl back into place.

“You look exquisite, my princess,” a voice croons from behind her.

A smile coils like ribbon on her cherry-tinged lips as she watches the pale fingers of Leander encircle her throat and clasp onto it a labyrinth of diamonds. “I thought I told you no peeking,” she chastises his impudent reflection as she traces the floral and foliate patterns of the cool stones.

“I’m afraid I could not help myself, the suspense was agonising,” her personal guard pleas, taking her hands to swivel her to face him as he descends to his knees. “I do hope you can forgive my transgression, for if not, my punishment is yours to do with as you may see fit,”

He allows his head to wilt like an autumnal blossom, lifting gradually to exhibit that crooked grin that leaned ever so charmingly to one side. He could sense the absence of any true anger in her for their empathic connection made plain any emotion she happened to feel.

“Rise, you fool,” she sighs, hooking her fingers beneath his chin to elevate him to full height as she herself stood. “I had been expecting you earlier I admit,”

“I was rather preoccupied with the finishing touches to the security measures before our empire-wide excursion,” he says, fanning out his arms like a great bird.

“Mhm,” Laila hums idly and smooths her lip-stain “I’m assuming you have secured our coach then?”

“I checked it,” he confirms “checked it twice in fact, you are most secure, madamazelle,” he slumps casually onto her curvaceous velvet armchair, one ankle propped on his knee. “I even took the liberty of sampling some of the delicacies from the carriage cart on your behalf. Poison is an elusive killer, one can never be too careful,”

“I’m certain you did,”

“Fortunately, I was able to conclude the only immediate danger to your person happens to be a patissier who really loves her buttercream,”

“Well thank the stars I have you keeping my best interests close to the chest,” she says, with an amused roll of her eyes for he knew as well as she that poison cannot harm her. She traverses the space between them, the skirt of her gown billowing like black waves as she comes to find rest on his lap.

“Madamazelle, you seem troubled,” Leander deduces, though for him it was never the case of an educated guess for her emotion filtered through him like a prism, he could sense every kaleidoscopic shift. One of the many enhancements he’d undertaken by swearing himself before the royal seal as her protector.

“Pre-parade jitters, it shall be fine,” she says, her earlier sparkling fizz had now decanted to a more gaseous anxiety. With the event beckoning so near she could’ve used Amalea’s easy wit, or her company at all. It didn’t seem right that she had to part with all her ladies for the journey.

“It’s a good thing I brought you this then, isn’t it?” he says and from within his gem-encrusted sheath he produces a vial of liquid in sunset pink.

She gasps aloud, palm cupping mouth in a fanciful gesture before she plucks the vial between her fingers and de-materialises it for safekeeping. “You are heaven sent, Leander,”

“Thank me later,”

Though thoughts of a later and what it may entail were immediately halted by an urgent knock at the door and a declaration that her coach was ready and waiting. Eagerly, Laila elevates from her seat upon Leander’s lap and gathers her skirts, casting a silent enchantment upon her dress which mutated the formation of its gemstones to mirror that of the sky.

With her spell complete, she slides her arm into Leander’s waiting elbow and allows him to escort her to the festivities she'd been waiting for since morning light.

* * *

The parade was first.

Parties had detonated the streets in a raucous foam of laughter and drinking. The nectar was free-flowing, it sparkles in the streets like spilt diamonds. Decanters fountain with it as the ringing chime of clinked glasses echo from rooftop to rooftop. The streets are littered with blood splotches of rose petals. There are many fireworks and many streamers and macarons stuffed with ripe cherries. Stores embellish their doorways with lotus flowers and brugmansia.

Laila takes the window seat beside her mother in the imperial state coach - it was coated in a thick gold lacquer with hand-painted panels depicting the heavens and the roof was weighed heavy with sprite statuettes. Her empress mother rolls down one of the amaranthic windows and waves towards her subjects serenely, her deep velvet gown rippled like liquid each time she leant towards them from her seat, as vibrant as magi blood fresh from the vein. Sewn into her décolletage was a gold chain hood embroidered with gemstones that cast off half-rainbows into every corner.

They journey across all six nations within a few weeks, and Laila watches the colourful metamorphosis of her kingdom take shape before her eyes cradled within the ornate bars of their gilded coach, as the royal families of each state open their gates and their arms to them for a solitary evening before they are due to move on. Her stomach clenches when they reach Mortos but she is relieved to find that they pass through the frozen country almost as soon as they land upon it.

Thus comes their return to The Crescent and their castle of fae-blown crystal and fortified marble, hoisted by ivy-strangled pillars that were once said to shoulder the homes of the gods. The residents drift within these walls with second-grown skins of silks and chiffons, all the rooms ablaze with the thrum of frantic energy that comes only when a ball was beckoning over the horizon.

The ballroom itself was the pride of the palace, a hazy daydream of soft-toned murals, gold leaf adornments and decorative stucco. Etchings of a marble frieze expanded over every wall depicting, in such high definition that could only come from divine fingers, their fall to earth and subsequent rise to imperial prominence. By the time the imperial coach arrived, the gilt gates had already opened and bodies flooded all four walls like a Malakian wave. The room was eager and alive with chatter, coddled by the rosy-orange glow of amaranthum lighting.

As was custom, her mother arrived first to be received by the guests in order of importance. First, the members of the electoral college, then the sworn royal families and finally the ambassadors. Live music serenaded the masses with whimsical piano pieces that were paired with the modest plucking of a bass guitar and once the orchestra slowed to a simmering tune of frail, diaphanous strings Laila knew it signalled the end of greetings.

With a dramatic gesture of her fingers she stripped the room of lighting in anticipation of her arrival, her luminescent gown the only source of reprieve from sudden visual obscurity.

Through her illusory charm, her gown had taken on the astronomical glow of the sky. Each time she took a step down the carpeted hall, clouds oscillated and swelled through the velvet skirts of her gown and obscured the complex pattern of constellations that drew themselves into her bodice until eventually the patterns began to recreate themselves, scrawling their way over the expanse of her arms to the tips of her fingers. Her hands thus began to crackle with this radiant electricity and when she snapped her fingers, every light source in the room ignited.

The crowd erupted in an uproarious applause at her display and from her throne of gold leaf and lacquered wood her mother gave a slight approving incline of her head. Thus the celebrations continued, the music graduating from its gentle simmer into a boil-over of strings, bass and piano all crammed together in a jaunty composition. Laila navigates her way through faces both old and new, all easily identified by their distinctive frocks as pertaining to their six nations united under one flag.

As she walks she could see various princesses collected in conversation and, with some displeasure, Sadik Nagin among them with his exuberantly coloured frock. He was effortlessly intermingled with Princess Catalina of Malakia, her floaty chiffon dress gathering like seafoam at her ankles, laughing with the steaming warmth of a furnace at something she’d said.

Laila’s eyes narrow perceptibly at the sight of the merchant prince. She neither understood nor agreed with her mother’s decision to invite him, though she deciphered some of the logic behind it. She couldn’t help but acknowledge him as a blight on her otherwise opulent tapestry. Proof that ennoblement was not simply god-given but could be blagged and bought into with the right whittled silver tongue and exceptionally smooth fingers.

She sought to approach the crowd, the full trumpeting skirt of her gown sweeping a pathway through a spattering of rose petals and fairy glitter. Her fingers secure the stem of a gold-rimmed flute sparkling with nectar along her journey, which is then poised delicately between the sensuous curve of her lips. She meets a brief halt from her exploration when the exposed small of her back is enclosed by a hand and paired with a voice:

“Might I steal you for a dance, Your Radiance?” Darius Calantis bares his teeth in a mocking imitation of a smile. He was garbed in Mortesian black silks with globules of rubies encrusted into his velvet long coat like speckles of fresh blood.

How presumptuous of him, to lay hands so brazenly upon something he could not hope to claim. And yet, he did not refrain from desiring it and oh, did she know the language of desire as well as a second tongue. She had feasted upon the wishes cast towards the heavens from those below, so hopeful and heartfelt, so eager to reach towards something higher than themselves, as though by doing so their feet would catch a foothold on the ladder of social mobility. She is the physical manifestation of every _I wish_ and _I want_.

She supposes _Death_ cannot help but reach for what is live and pulsing. For that is what he was, living pestilence, the exhaust fumes of several smoking chimneys. Cursed Occassi and his arsenal of black magic. Even now with his hand so close to her back she can feel it sparking off of him like static, like a thousand spindly cockroach legs.

“You may,” she grants and takes his hand, sterilising him under the cauterising heat of her palm, burning bright as the star core that powered her very essence.

He slides his hand around her supple back and drags her to him, shackling her to the gated bars of his ribcage. She hadn’t been prepared for that, being so close to him.

Her glass topples slightly and splashes with a lively fizzle until she dissipates it into the air and rests her palm atop his shoulder. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight, Prince Darius,” she says as they begin their first pivot. She angles herself to avoid the brunt of his dark decadent scent. “It’s been near impossible to persuade you past the gates of Mortos,”

“And miss the _party_?” he expresses in feigned astonishment and twirls her like the point of an axis. “Perish the thought,” he draws her back into his embrace “one thousand years of Solarite dominance, now that’s something to mark down in the history books. Not quite the two thousand of my genealogy but well… who’s keeping track?”

Laila bristles in his embrace, leans her hand against the marmoreal wall of his chest. “I believe that’s meant to be you,” she informs him “you _are_ or at least were our Mortesian scholar,”

“You still seem rather sore that I left,” he notices, and was rather aggravatingly amused by it.

She glances away from him for a very long time. “I’m not,”

“Upset that we never got to finish our tutoring?”

She glances back at him, her eyes a searing hot crystal blue.

“No matter, Your Radiance, I am not here to dredge up past memories, rather than to kindle new ones,” he says and leans so close, his breath steaming in her ear and yet his chest was stiffened and immovable as a boulder, like no life was capable of pumping in him so he siphoned it slowly from her waning will. Even now she could feel her skin begin to sag in his presence. “I have some news,”

She trembles in spite of herself, hating the magnetising draw she felt to him like the interior of his chest was molten iron in the place of a heart or the coruscating celestial body that occupied her own centre.

“It’s about Dominus,”

Her eyes snap to his instantly with such a fierceness that she could sense Leander approaching, alerted by her sudden elevated pulse rate. She wards him off with a reassuring nod and turns her attention back to Darius. “You’ve discovered him?” she asks, her voice warbling with a slight tremor. She moistens her lips with a wet glide of her tongue before continuing. “I need to know… how did he pass?”

She feels her nails inch further into the velvet of Darius’ coat as he looked upon her, his cognac eyes orange in the light. “He isn’t dead,”

“What?”

He cocks his head westward to indicate her mother’s presence. “Uh uh,” he says, and pivots a full turn with a swipe of her skirts around the ballroom floor. “Your imperial mother wanted me to keep this conversation quite private,” he presses his lips to her temple “meet me in the usual place,”

He was gone within a flurry of smoke before she could bite back with a whip of her tongue that there _was_ no usual place. Not for them. She casts a cursory glance around the festivities and gradually allows herself to melt into the smog of perfume and sweat to make her escape from the room.

* * *

She awaits him on the balcony, the air almost duplicitous in its frigid warmth, like an embrace that was given only under duress. She paces the expanse of the gold-flecked marble, awaiting the length of his shadow to stretch out across the floor, signalling his presence. When he does not come, she retreats into her bedroom and disintegrates her dress into floating atoms.

Flecks of gold and silver gyrate upwards like embers from her thighs to the ample shelf of her breasts until the only barrier that remained between her and the moon was the gift wrap of floral lace that still obscured her alabastrine form. Like a present on mid-winter morn with the ribbon-belt to unlace with quivering fingers.

She begins to do so now until she senses that same static charge in the vicinity of the room, skittering like a colony of sugar ants against the nape of her neck. His hands were on her not long after, the deep olive of them almost eclipsing her rosy brown fingers.

He puts his lips to her neck and she shivers for how cool he was, lukewarm and tepid, like stepping into the water of a bath you’d left neglected for too long. His lips begin to climb beneath her jaw when she finally puts a stop to it, pivoting in one balletic step.

“Ten years I don’t hear from you, and now this,” she hurls towards him, her blue eyes setting hard as aquamarine. “Did you really think you could come back and kiss me and everything would be fine?”  
“You know I had no choice, Laila,” he tells her, each word came strained as though weighted with his obvious regret. “Wherever they command me to I go, it’s not a matter of wanting,”

“You had a choice to say goodbye,” she launches back, stepping away from him to cradle the nearest chiselled bed-pillar. “And you couldn’t even offer me that,”

“There wasn’t enough time and your imperial mother would never have allowed it.” His voice begins to soften rather notably on the latter half of his sentence.

Her rage unfurls around her like the corolla of her namesake, a pulsation of thick, breath-snuffing velvet. “You had enough time to tell her about Dominus,” she seethes “and how dare you come to her first with that information, if you knew he was alive you ought to have come to me. He was my betrothed, not hers,” she punctuates this with a stamp of her foot, almost petulant in nature, but she no longer cared. He had not yet felt the full extent of her temper.

He took it in a stride as always, his expression damningly impassive as he slides his arms around the notched curve of her waist, they were sleek and craggy and just as stone-hard as the rest of him. She could feel her back straightening against the firm wall of his chest. “I had to go to her first and you know it. You think I didn’t want to come to you the minute I knew? But as of now, he is a national threat, I would’ve thought that you would be able to see this,” Darius reasons, he palms her cheek to face him over her shoulder “it is why I came to your imperial mother first with the news, as proof of my loyalty, in the event that she somehow procures the knowledge of me knowing otherwise,”

She pivots to face him. “If my mother happens to find Dominus before I do you know what will become of him,”

“Oh yes,” Darius says “I’m pretty much guaranteeing it,”

“He’s your brother,” she exclaims in astonishment and her eyes at once seemed as wide and guileless as windowless doors. “How can you condemn him to banishment?”

“Because if Dominus so much as steps foot on Mortesian soil I know I will be among but the first of his victims,” Darius tells her with ease and a lethargic lift of one shoulder as though it troubled him not to admit it. “It’s hardly a difficult choice to make, him or me, and I fully intend to hold onto what’s mine,”

“Of course you do,” she declares with an acerbic derision. “But then I wonder, what is it that to you are loyal to other than your own ambition?”

“Ambition is a rather potent force, one you shouldn’t be so quick to disparage considering your own desires,” and here he pauses as a flicker of something sly and knowing encroached upon his features “or are you still playing at being the White Witch?”

She swivels away from him with a pouty harrumph. “How did you even come to know of any of this?”

“That I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he admits, one hand slidingly nonchalantly into his pocket “how about we say a little birdy happened to whisper it into my ear?”

Her thin, pale brow scales upwards but she knows better than to press for information. “Yes well, be sure to send some of those twitterings in my direction next time, won’t you?”

Darius chuckles. “You know, I have missed this,” he admits and takes a rather daring step forward to drag her to him by her hips. “You giving me a hard time,”

She puffs out a derisive snort. “Not enough to call or write evidently,”

“And how would that have worked when you know full well how closely monitored communications are with the royal family?” Darius pauses for a brief lacuna “Laila, I’m only here for the evening and I’d rather not spend the entirety of it fighting when I could be making love to you instead,”

Her body tenses in his grip and she soon frees herself from him to slide onto the monogrammed sheets that clothe her mattress. “And what makes you think that’s going to happen?” Her golden brow arches upwards in inquisition.

“Do you not want me to say goodbye to you? Belated, I realise, but I did imagine it going something like this,” he says and curves a finger through the loop of a ribbon hole to tug it free.

She watches the silk unfurl along with the rest of her will, her bottom lip dimpled between her teeth before she leans up and says. “Once,” and she pulls him close, pressing her lips to his and just feels him melt against the plump softness as she coaxes open his mouth to sigh and follows it with the soft glide of her tongue.

He tears her undergarments away, his own clothes melting off his skin with a quick conjury as he presses her to the mattress, causing her hair to fan out like sunset. They make a bed of each other between the cradle of her whittled willow limbs, the pillowed warmth of her body. Every inch of her was a call for him to rest against her, sink into her. She never thought she’d hear him sound so relieved.

Once soon bleeds into several times as she realises just how much she’d needed that familiar weight between her thighs and the surge of electricity crawling up her abdomen.

They find newer ways to tangle themselves together until they were both sated and she lets Darius kiss a final path from her shoulder down to the small of her back before she expresses. “You need to go before Leander comes to check on me, he’ll be able to sense me from a mile away,”

“Are you still toying with that poor boy?” Darius murmurs into the crook of her neck, he sounded amused.

“Was I supposed to take an oath and live out my days as an Aikhan priestess until your return?” Laila retorts, swivelling onto her back to tug him up to her by his tousled dark hair. “I highly doubt your time in Mortos was lonely,”

His eyes pin her down like an anvil, orange in the glow of the rising dawn. “There have been companions yes but none quite so close to home,”

“Perhaps I enjoy the closeness,” she tells him and traces the angular plane of his stubbled cheek. “Less easy for you to escape from me that way,”

He leans in to kiss her again, his mouth moving along hers in slow, sensuous glides before she shoves him away with a suppressed moan.

“Go,” she commands with all her princess petulance. She turns away from him so as not to see him when he does eventually leave. Instead, she plucks a filmy negligee from thin air that settles upon her shoulders as easily as morning dew. She doesn’t look back until the shadow of him had been entirely peeled from the room and not even his scent remained.

Her throat began to bud with an undecipherable emotion as she comes to consider that perhaps the non-goodbye had been the easier path. At least then she’d had her anger to cradle her in the aftermath. Now she didn’t even have that.


	2. Daedal

Here is a cursed land, torn asunder by the warring natures of fire and ice. Where the snow will char your skin in spite and the lava will soothe like a freshwater kiss. Thus a cursed land it is indeed, full of cursed things. Flowers that are spiked with a choker of thorns, long as a finger and enough poison in its spindle to lay soldiers prostrate by the dozen. Almost nothing gains life in here that has not then been nurtured to take it away.

In the centrepiece of this corporeal nightmare was a castle once known as the Malvoir Keep, its onyx towers glass-tipped and outstretched like clawed fingers. From a distance, it looked perpetually poised to dig a hole through the skies and scoop out its innards to the frosted earth below. Its majesty was the only thing that remained unmolested in the war that further ravaged the blighted lands, preserved only by its self-imposed elevation from the rest of the cities and towns that scrabbled at its ankles.

A serpent tongue stretch of road had entangled itself around the precipitous hill that lead up to the  bronze gates where the souls of his father’s past trespassers were chiselled into figurines like trophies. They stretch their bodies against the waxed barrier of their prison, muscles taut and strained, contorting into increasingly anguished positions. Perched atop these colossal doors, were fellow sculpted figurines of horned watchers who surveyed every entrance and exit with a rancorous vigour.

It was a flying car that now breached the gates for entrance, a sleek and black beast with an animalistic purr, powered by the same baleful energy that puffed asthmatically from the chimney tops of the cobbled streets it prowled past and intensified the carmine hue of the sky.

Darius sat facing the window, his face chiselled with troubled introspection while Reisa sat near him, a sultry heat subtly radiating off her person spiced with rose and patchouli oil. While deep in thought, he felt her hand magnetise to his own across the plush leather seats and interlock their fingers.

He allows her hold to linger before the car slows to the stop inside the courtyard. A servant arrives to open the door, beckoning Darius to slide out and retake his companion’s hand to assist her from the vehicle.

The steps were an even further unnecessary preventative measure at isolation. Too narrow and too steep. But it was an effective warm up in such blistering conditions as they approached the emblazoned castle entrance.

The castle itself was practically panting with a pre-lit fire once they finally made it inside, their arrival heavily anticipated. A black-suited ghoul with a skeletal visage approaches to claim their furs as Darius unburdens the exotic pelt from his shoulders before helping Reisa out of hers.

“Some tea seems to be in order, Mordred, with burnt honey and lemon cakes,” he instructs the ghoul before traversing into the grand sitting room with it's obstinately roaring fire. He approaches the jade mantel and coasts his fingers over the sleek surface before they come to rest at the edge as he warms himself by the hearth.

“Come away from the fire, Darius,” croons Reisa, her voice finely tuned into something low and saccharine and sweetly forbidden. She encircles his firm torso with her shapely brown limbs. “If it’s warming you need, I am more than equipped for that,”

He knew it to be true of course, the lascivious suggestion aside, as a child of the Seraji desert she had been anointed with the gift to wield fire, as all Vysterian magi were, a single element as pertaining to their place of birth. Altering the temperature of herself and others was only a mere flicker of the power she possessed. “You have done quite enough,” he tells her and then pivots to hold her arms, her dark skin was enticingly warm in his chilled grip. “I have not yet rewarded you for the excellent service you've provided during your stay,”

She receives this as she does all manner of praise, with a brazen curl of her voluptuous lips, for she did enjoy an extolling of her virtues. “All in a day’s work for an Auric Sister,” she says, with a rather transparent veil of arrogance as she crosses her ankles and swivels a full turn, casting a coquettish glance over her shoulder. She slinks over to the empty settee and slouches languidly atop it, expanding her limbs over the dimpled velvet.

Mordred arrives soon after, wheeling a meekly squeaking tea tray and leaving a trail of steam puffs over his shoulder from the brewing urn.

“Ugh, you Northerners and your tea,” Reisa sucks her teeth in annoyance “I could do with a leave to Zivar if that meant I would get my hands on real coffee,”

Mordred pours them both glasses through a strainer and places them into silver cup holders, insulated from heat through enchantment. The carved bone teaspoon clinks demurely at the edges of the crystal as he stirs in a scoop of burnt honey.

“You know I’d bring you a pail of it if I could,” Darius tells her, her chin pinched affectionately between his pincer grip. “But I cannot afford to spring for luxuries in this time of rationing, you know that, I can scarcely prevent the peasants from knocking the door off its hinges without you and I being seen indulging in such worldly decadences known as coffee,”

Alas she’d been suckling at the teat of Vysterian abundance for far too long to adjust to the austerity present in Mortesian culture, where the crops could be just as temperamental and prone to spiteful scorn as a jilted lover.

“Did I not see one of your Enforcers helping himself to a hefty bottle of peach nectar a while back?” Reisa asks, her thin and steeply angular brows expressing the full extent of her scrutiny.

He ought to be more careful with her, he thinks, amiable as her company has been he cannot allow himself to forget she'd been placed by the government to watch him, report on him.

He still remembers the first time he ever saw her attend court on the arm of his Prime Minister. Her snow-capped shoulders had been draped with exotic furs that spoke to climates accustomed to dry heat. Her rich brown complexion told him much the same, though it had been glazed over with a sheen of frost, and opulence chimed from every raw gold bangle on her wrists.

She'd come to Malvoir under the guise of a secretary, slowly fixturing herself within the framework of his castle. It hadn't taken him long to sniff her out, but it had taken him far less time putting her skills to use among mutual benefit. She fed him insights into Mortos while she fed news to Amira.

“I judge not what my people do to reward themselves after a full day’s work,” Darius responds breezily, retreating between the waiting arms of his velvet chair and propping one ankle on his knee. “A decent cup of tea at the end of the day, or yes even a glass of peach nectar, can make all the world’s difference between lucidity and lunacy in this country,” he sounds out a drum roll on his knee.

Gods only knew it was about to get worse with Dominus on the prowl. He was certain to contest for his rightful sovereignty, likely catapulting into another war in the process after Darius had only just finished patting down the fires of the last one. It had been he, after all, who had rescued Mortos from the fringes of total destruction when it became apparent that the war was in fact going to conclude in Solarite victory. His father had been immovable until the very end and he was doubtless that Dominus intended to follow suit in finishing what he’d started.

He picks up his tea by the glass holder and sips in contemplation, its pungent medicinal flavour softened by burnt honey and then helps himself to a lemon cake.

He had been mid-bite when Mordred crept from the shadows like a spider. “A visitor for you, Highness,” the corpse rasps “Lady Echo Veritis of Skalberga,”

He nods in acknowledgement for he had been expecting her. And the daughter of his Head Scholar was not one to be kept waiting. “Send her through.”

* * *

The burnished wax eyes of his ancestors grope him along his journey, perched inside the sinuous black zinc of portrait frames. Though he would not see the stern, violet gaze of his mother here among them. He could claim only one half by descent, the half of his father, the kingsblood, for all the good it did him after entering the world through the wrong pair of thighs.

His mother belonged to a legion of devoutly powerful sorceresses, stubborn and autonomous and insusceptible to the binds of marriage to anything but their craft. He could still remember a childhood tinged with moist earth and oleander, being hummed into complacency by the low, velvet chants of their hymnals. That was so many centuries ago now, too many, and even more still since he’d been taken into the castle.

Darius enters the Audience Room just as lightning plunges its fork into the earth. It desaturated the interior, slicing it into shards of light and shadow. He passes by the black-paned windows unperturbed and instead moves to greet his guest.

Echo Veritis had been escorted by her chaperone. She could often be seen with a leering phantom duplicating her every movements on rigorous demand of her father and it wasn't difficult to see why from the looks of her. She was a mere cotton slip of a girl, pale to the point of translucency, diminutive in size and stature even for an Occassi. Though she desperately tried to temper this shortcoming with the rigidity of her spine which was perpetually erect like an iron rod had become embedded into her vertebrae.

She was dressed in rippling black velvet cut with the frailest kind of bobbin lace that could unravel with the least touch and her hair was half tucked away in a ribboned fishtail plait. Though what remained of the straightened mass stained the backs of her shoulder like a river of moonlit ink.

“Your Highness,” she greets with a demure dip at the knees.

“Lady Echo,” Darius’ tongue traces over the syllables of the name as though he were smoothing it out like paper. “To what do I owe this visit,”

“I have some news,” she says, her voice flat as nectar released of carbonation. She was often scarce with her words, rationed them careful as though she feared she may run out or perhaps more that she feared her abundance of them, of plying one with more than they might be able to properly digest. “May I request we speak candid?”

Her inferral was clear and his eyes cut sharply towards the chaperone. “Leave the room,”

To his credit, the guardian does not once flinch from his duty. “I am under strict orders that-”

“You would disobey the will of your ruler?”

It was a warning packaged in deceptively soft padding but the intent was clear. He looked no less eager to leave the room, not that he could be blamed. Occasselle were precious cargo, for within their thighs they held the portal to existence and after the war their numbers had dwindled. He knew this better than anyone.

“I will be at the door,” he directs this assurance towards Echo rather than the prince before he retreats from the room.

“Calante’s Wrath, I thought that old goat would never leave,” Echo scoffs, all her frail modesty discarded like an ill-fitting mask as her eyes sparked with renewed vitality. “Now, to business,” she draws a scroll from thin air and unravels it before scaling up the steps to meet him and drapes the parchment across his lap. “I painted this today, it seemed relevant,”

“You have a talent,” he commends, meaning his praise. He’d taken much personal interests in Echo’s artistic talents, or more what they revealed to him. His eyes rove over her canvas of diaphanous Aikhan silk, the dense greenery of it and the humidity that practically seeps through the fabric. It was no land that was to be found in Mortos, that was for certain.

“It came to me in a dream,”

“A dream, you say,” Darius observes, squinting to make sense of the landscape. “I assume you thought of Dominus before you went to sleep,”

“I saw him,” she says, and his body twitches in alertness. “He was injured, crawling, I couldn’t quite get the gist of it. But I’d hazard a guess it was somewhere in Vysteria,”

As he had been the first moment Echo had confided in him of her personal gift, scepticism overruled his conviction of belief. For all the weird and wonderful occurrences in Mortos, he had never come across something quite like her, someone whose eyes could penetrate through the fabric of time with arrowlike acuity.

“Where?” Darius demands.

“Look closer,”

Darius peers nearer to the painting, now complete, as recognition of the foliage jumps out at him in speckles, like sun motes, collecting together in his vision until he sees. “Thalistan,”


	3. Bestial

Far to the south east of Soleterea, in a land of swaying treetops and open-palmed leaves, a celebration of a different kind commences. Though the music of Thalistan was something ancient and earthly, something basal that seeped within the soil they walked. A constant seismic bassline that rumbles the ridges of warm tectonic plates beneath their feet.

It formed the structural rhythm for the shimmying trees, their swaying full-bodied trunks, culminating in a percussive beat that bumps against the taut drum-skin of the fruit and plucks their stems like strings. They snap then, falling into the waiting arms of their harvester, enticed by their tune, the rapturous hymnals they sung to the natural composition that their earth provided, their voices low and syrupy-thick as the humidity that swaddled them during their toil.

The wind carries their voices, lifting them high into the treetops where the ripest fruit was nestled warm and out of reach, their elusiveness making them all the more sweeter when they were finally caught. The kind of fruit that would burst into their mouths as soon as their teeth touched the rind.

This was their harvest song, one that took a different shape to the song that lulled the earth to sleep or roused it to awakening. It was the song they sang when the earth’s pregnancy had ripened in full and was now heavy and plump with its nutritious bounty. So they sang, coaxing the guava and sweet green banana to them, tapping their feet to the winding rhythm of the earth and the wind in a language only they could comprehend. For it is their gift, this intimate knowledge of the earth, whom they could trace as well as a lover.

And the fruit drops like coins in a fountain, with a faint sombre ring that seems to stretch forever, idle as a hum. A vibration shivers through the fruit as the harvesters line them in their crates in neatened piles, bodies rocking as they are lifted deftly and deposited into the back of the loading cart.

Their continuous low, flat note provides a backdrop bass as the wagon wheels bounce over battered dirt trails. These were wizened roads, roads that were natural-born and unrefined, worn into submission like a pair of old shoes by the several heels and hooves that came before it. They lay untarnished by nurture, patterned by the intricate shadows of great fan leaves and braided tree-trunks whose silhouettes cut into designs of foliate lace.

The junction appears like a raised split in the carpet, cutting a partition between dry, withered sandskin and the adolescent granite that replaces it. The lumbering vehicle kicks dust off its sand-speckled wheels as, with a hop and a skip, it grinds against the unspoken threshold to city proper with a slippery smoothness.

Chalcedon looms not long after this transition, a cluster of pyramidic towers bearded with verdure. Green vegetation intermingles effortlessly with this red and gold-bricked metropolis, as many-windowed buildings filter patchy spotlights in yellow and orange hues, gobbling sunrays to feed power to the gridlines that form the underbelly of the porcelain streets.

The vents pipe heavily with the scent of incense, the brewing of medicinal herbs into pharmaceuticals and the processed spices of its shopping district as the driverless wagon takes a sharp turn into the bazaar warehouse and its engines sputter sleepily to a close.

* * *

 

Ellena Paw enters through the gateway of the bazaar with the scent of skin and spice heavy in the air. The facade was colourfully painted with twin peacocks at each corner with long, scrolling tails that swept downwards and elegantly curled at the ends in gilt and wrought-iron detailing. 

Mariam walks alongside her, a gloomy sulkiness stretched like overcast over her features that could not be strictly attributed to the heat that swipes their bodies with a gold-buttered glow. “Did you have to ask me along?” her younger sibling laments as they are enclosed within the globule of air-conditioned coolness. “You know how I detest shopping,”

Ellena retrieves one of the blanket-lined wicker baskets at the entrance. “I could use some of your exceptional strength on the journey home,” she expresses, with appreciation towards the taut musculature of her sister’s form, her sinews emboldened by the obvious tension in her shoulders. Their tall willow-frames and ligneous complexions were heavy hints to their descent from the Thalit, though Mariam had broadened thick as an oak stump from years of guiding sails over choppy Malakian waters. “And since I'll be the one cooking the food…”

She allows the inferral to complete itself. Had she lived at home still she would’ve had the added appendages of her mother and her mother before her. Thalit families were often large and so domestic work was halved, portioned and shared into slices as easily digestible as mango flesh. But at the clinic it was just her and Mariam, the latter whom had never been truly able to rend herself from the sea that was in her and the unruly temperament that followed, where each meal was determined by the deftness of one’s fishing line.

“I was thinking of some kidney bean curry,” Ellena decides aloud as she lifts and spreads her food tokens like a gambler’s deck. “With greens and potatoes,”

“As you wish, sister dearest,” came Mariam’s piquant response. Her sarcasm had seen some saltening since she had been away at sea, like the tip of her tongue had become infused with the briny air. Aunt Ariadne would not be impressed. 

Considering the matriarch of her old home still stained the roof of her mouth with an aftertaste of iron. Her old aunt was a stern magi, broad as a boulder and just about as immovable. She’d been the final wall to breach upon her decision to depart from her family home. She still wore the cotton bodice and petticoat that she’d sewn for her since completing her medical apprenticeship. The loose charms on the complex-patterned beadwork tinkled around her ankles, detailing the jovial sprawl of sunflower fields she used to roll through in her youth. The white muslin clung to the edge of her hips, a spectral grip, as though embedded on her skin was the warmth of the last memory you ever held dear and you weren’t ready to let go. Not yet. She regarded the scrape of the fabric against her skin with much the same weary, the same woeful guilt.

“Will Odella be joining us?” Ellena continues on, as they traverse the tented, bustling stalls to an enticing row of spice trays where she scoops sacks full of fennel and ginger. “I want to ensure I have enough for three, or more, seeing your appetite,” she quirks a heavy brow, though it was not said unkindly.

“You must ask?” Mariam quips, with a grin that leans heavily to one side. “The magi has practically moved in,”

“Oh, and is this one for keeps, Mary?” Ellena inquires, for her sister’s large appetites certainly encompassed more than just food.

“The plan is still the same as it always has been since I graduated Moonacre. I want to see the sun, ride the waves and make love to beautiful women.” She glances sideways at her sister with that incorrigible twinkle in her brown eyes. “But I am willing to make some amendments to that last decree,”

“How fortunate for Odella,”

They trade the warmth of a smile as they shop, filling their basket to the brim and trading their tokens at the counters. Hers were backed by her status as household duty holder and so there was always a recurrent stack of tokens she could trade for rare or out of season goods as most homemakers of the community did. 

Anise was always selling fruit at this hour though she seemed out of place without her two springy-haired sons fastened to her ankles. They were regulars at the clinic, having become known for contracting all manners of childlike ailments from their still feeble immune systems.

“And just how are you and the twins doing, Anise?” Ellena asks, with a gentle flowering concern in her voice.

“They’re doing much better now, thank you, that bath scrub you gave us last week has really helped to ease that terrible rash they picked up in the jungle the other day,” Anise shudders behind her desk in remembrance.

Ellena nods, mind hearkening back with reluctance to that day they came to her, arms and legs bubbling with liquefied boils that near exhausted the elasticity of their youthful skin. “Well you let me know if you ever need a refill, free of charge,” she hastens to add as she withdraws her basket from the counter.

“Have you seen the news recently?” Anise wants to know, her lips were drawn thin. “They’re saying another one of us got snatched just this week,”

By us, she of course was referring to her status as a mundane, categorised by their perceived lacking of any magical ability. Their presence in the public consciousness was often minimal and even readily and disparagingly disregarded, but the recent string of disappearances had been enough to insert them beneath the harsh blare of the magnifying glass. From what Ellena could tell, general opinion was contradictory on how to receive this newfound spotlighting. There were many who shrank away, migrating like nocturnal animals at the first blade of sunlight behind locked doors and drawn blinds.

“By the gods, that is truly terrible Anise,” she exclaims, her palm flattened firmly against her chest. “Has anyone talked to the sheriff? I’m sure he is wanting just as much to get to the bottom of this as we all are,”

“Tch, I wouldn’t count on it, Mata, I’m sure the sheriff is hardly tormenting himself over the case of a few dozen lost Huskies,”

The use of the self-referential slur sent her reeling like a sudden shove to the chest. “I’m- I’m sure that’s not true-”

“Ela,” Mariam asserts, cool and smooth and unflinchingly pragmatic. “Are you ready to go?”

It was the most subtle form of trying to muzzle her from pressing the issue further. “Yes,” she answers and hooks the handle of her basket on her elbow. “Yes, I’m ready,”

That evening they take a streetcar to the outskirts of their town and walk alongside one another, crowned with the bounty of their harvest. Their heads balance the weight of a coronet woven in wicker to take the weight off their arms as their celestial audience looks on at their ritual blasphemy, their flickering forms bejewelling the pathway home.

“You shouldn’t press them to talk about such things,” Mariam advises her as they detour towards the forest path “you know how they are, mundanes are private on a good day but things are sensitive right now. Most people are on high alert,”

“I know,” Ellena says, just as she knew the only reason most would even talk to them was on account of who their father was.

They had just passed through the aisle of the old wood whose trunks were knotted like braids when Mariam tugs her sleeve and cries “Ellena, look!”

She pivots her head just swift enough to see one of the glowing orbs unlatch itself from the sky like a button popping off a garment and cascade towards the scintillating spire of the palace.

“Stars are falling, you know what that means,”

She did know and the anxiety of it strummed at her heartstrings like a sitar. Whenever stars fell there were certainly Solarites soon to follow. “Don’t tell father what you saw,” she pleads, her limpid brown eyes moving erratically.

But Mariam was already moving further ahead, the basket she carried not even close to toppling in spite of her speed. “If we saw it then he likely did too,” she simply rationalises “I’m sorry, Ela,”

If she knew her father well he wouldn't have to see it. He had plenty of informers burrowed into every street corner ready to siphon off information to fill his ears and lengthen his pockets.

So she carries on, defeated, deciding it best just to focus on her next steps of making dinner as behind her more stars began to descend. They leave streaks across the sky like tear lines. The heavens mourn them.

* * *

That same night she takes a walk through the jungle. She often does that, as though by the act of losing herself she might re-find herself later, fuller and wiser and more whole through the experience.

The sight of the falling stars troubled her as she knew it would trouble most of her father’s people. No one truly knew how a star became a Solarite only that as soon as one fell another of them sprang up in its place.

Some speculated that they hatched them like eggs, others considered more elaborate conjury involved. If anything, many at least agreed that they looked like stars. Even now Ellena could envision them, the image had singed upon her brain like a tattoo. The light-bulb fluorescence of their hair, their eyes, migraine-inducing even in the thick of darkness and the metallic summer hue of their skin tones.

Her Aunt Ariadne had told her that the Solarites were gifted to them from the gods, as were the elements bestowed upon them shortly after their arrival. Her father had alternate ideas, however, having been skipped over this supposed gift, this godtouch, though he dare not speak them in the presence of prying ears.

Ellena traces her finger over her first tattoo on her backhand, a right of passage for every Thalit who came of age. The tree stump symbol and its ornate geometric patterns in loops and spirals. Seven rings for the year they were first welcomed into their path as a practitioner of earth magic. Mariam would have seven waves in her place, though Malakians didn't mark themselves like they did, but she was of Thalit blood and she would know their customs regardless of the path she chose.

She sensed the wood begin to thicken around her as the sounds she heard became more animal. This was the part of the country that she liked best when she could be in tune with the earth’s natural symphony, the screech of insects and the disturbance of treetops as birds launched themselves from the branches. Her _ether_ felt more elevated here and her magic churned inside her centre like a cobra constantly coiling and unfurling again, just waiting for a point of focus to lunge upon.

As she walks, she strokes her fingers against some of the close-lipped buds of wildflowers and watches them yawn awake into flamboyantly-coloured corollas, heady with scent. Fireflies were already beginning to cluster around the faint buzz of her _ether_ and with a delighted giggle, Ellena allows them to enlighten her path through the forest of her jungle as they bounced through mid-air like rocks skipping over a lake before halting with a suddenness against a thick heavyweight. An accentuated silhouette in the darkness that Ellena soon discovered to be a person.

Startled, she slowly encroaches upon this shadowy figure, her eyes adjusting to the dimmed haze of firefly-heat to make sense of their position on the ground, the status of their consciousness. She called out to them and then knelt before them when there was no response, her eyes scanning first for danger and then re-focusing at the task at hand. She slides on the gloves she always kept diligently on her person for matters of emergency, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring her medkit.

The body was bulging with protrusions of congealed black lumps that were starred with glints of moonlight. They looked like shimmering mollusc shells, like suckling leeches. Ellena thought that they might be leeches until she lifted one, only for a small sticky head to detach from the body as the mass in between stretched into a thin, dangling thread. Occassi blood, she thinks and releases the dried portion perched between her fingers like she’d touched hot metal. She was suddenly thankful for her dutiful usage of gloves.

Her mind roams the large cache of medical archives she’d had compacted in her brain from years of study, retrieving what she knew of Occassi physiology. Not much, she soon realised. Their hides were thickened, insulated walls built to ward off any form of entrance. Hard as a carapace with the same smooth, flexible properties of regular skin. If something penetrated this one, let alone multiple times, then it might already be too late for him.

Something knocked obstinately against her brain, begging for entrance, willing her against making such a conclusion. It was soon to be replaced by the nervous ringing of lawful duty that would see her turn over this dying Occassi to the authorities. She could see that he was not marked like the others and drew her own conclusions. Ellena had her own duty however, to that of her provision of care. Not often did these two duel for the rights of her loyalty but it was her impenetrable dedication to her field that often emerged victorious.

So she upturns the Occassi onto his side, every movement inched felt like the budging of a statue. The earth fights against her as she does so, longing to keep its prisoner ensnared between the unruly tangle of green roots and swelling fungi. She longed for the aid of Mariam’s arms, their rugged coastline of muscle, but she knew that her sister would only urge her to abandon her aid of this immortal if only for good reason.

Once secured on his side she dusts him off for dried earth and grass shoots and checks his injuries for entrances and exits. Most had been plugged behind the adhesive barrier of his ichor, the thick caterpillar bodies still oozing and wriggling from their burrows. His pulse was as sluggish as it should be and his breathing was regular. Though peeking shyly out from his neck was a protrusion not quite like the others. A flat rounded surface made of wood. She reaches for it and seizes the solid edge only to feel her way around the circumference of a bullet.

Her hand snaps back like a stretched band upon realisation. Not enough was it to simply stumble upon an Occassi in the thick of the Landour jungle, but a _hunted_ one. Her mind began to calculate the probabilities of any Argentine Brothers still lingering behind him. He would have to be moved for certain, but her clinic would almost definitely be out of bounds.

A sudden strained, throaty gasp screeched like a violin bow off-key as eyes of fluorescent blue threw open their shutters.

Ellena flings herself back, a ragdoll without a parachute, before her escape is barred by one gnarled grip around her thin brown wrist.

After a few rapid-fire blinks, the Occassi’s colossal pupils slice into vertical slits as they dart, analytical, over the oval shape of Ellena’s face. “Who _are_ you?” he demands in a gravel-laced baritone. His Thal was perfect, but accentless, which only further added to her sense of apprehension.

“I’m a healer,” she says and for some reason decides to trace over her healer’s tattoo, a strip of lotus flowers that crept from wrist to thumb, as though he might know what it meant. When he doesn’t quite respond to it, she speaks on. “I found your body in the forest, I can help you,”

There is a slight flex of something indecipherable across his saturnine features.

“Can you walk?” she asks him.

“Hmm,” he grunts in response “I have a lodge not far from here, few feet or so away,”

That surprised her, not many people would make a home so deep into the jungle, even she who knew and loved it so well would not dare venture too far north into the territory that had long been claimed by monsters of legend. _The Occassi are monsters of legend too_ , she thinks and realises she did not yet know how he sustained his injuries, once more increasing her fear. “Who did this to you?” she asks him without thinking.

He only stops to look at her and it felt like her muscles were being slowly peeled to the bone. “There are medical supplies at my lodge,” he says, after some moments. He stands up with little difficulty, even manages a few steps before he staggers and Ellena rises to cushion his descent.

“That bullet in your neck, it’s setâre wood,” she deduces, having long heard tales of the mystical tree and its evergreen star-pointed leaves, native only to the orange deserts of Seraj. “If there are Argentine Brothers here perhaps we should-”

“You will find no life around here for miles,” he interjects, his face crackling like aged stone with every pain-filled step he took. “I made certain of that,”

She does not ask for elaboration and soon finds she doesn’t really wish to know. With the weight of him supported by his own legs, she finds it easier to move him now, though he still bore down upon her like some oppressive gravitational force, trying to press her down into the crust of the underworld from whence he came. That was what she’d heard of them after all, that the Solarites had come soaring, flying, a dancing beacon of wonderment, while the Occassi had unearthed themselves from somewhere dark and deep.

His lodge is about as far as he’d specified, protruding like a splinter from the earth, all wood and stone and bearded moss. The air around it was dank with moist earth and temple incense, something resinous and ancient, something that smelled almost holy.

The damp scent continued once they'd pushed past the doors but it was tempered by the distinctive aroma of smoke and burning wood. She discovers the fireplace as the source for this as they move into his living quarters.

“Do you have a dining table?” she inquires, eager for something long and flat to lay him against.

Their surroundings were stiff, orderly, a soldier’s lair, everything was to be added for necessity and to no excess. It seemed inhospitable somehow, like a magazine spread of what someone imagined a home to appear like, structured to be captured at only the most flattering of angles.

“Through to the left here,” he directs her and she follows through, aiding him into his dining area. The kitchen reeked of animal flesh. The scent stuck her, close-fisted, and the muscles in her stomach collapsed in response. There were few meat eaters this far east in Thalistan but the decaying miasma was unmistakable, made far more unsettling by the fact that the kitchen was as pristine as the rest of the house.

The dining table, however, was a masterpiece, a singular object of decadence in otherwise self-effacing surroundings. Ellena longed to trace her fingers across the floral vignette that was carved into the body and legs of polished mahogany wood. The gold leaf finish was entirely unblemished but the appearance of the wood appeared distinguished.

“Lie down on your back,” she tells the Occassi and he obeys, resting his gargantuan form against the table with an ease as though it were pillowed with dandelion down. She eyes his meagre display of herbs hemmed against the kitchen wall, crudely strung together by fraying twine and makes a selection to burn in all four corners. _Sage, lavender, cinnamon, thyme._ She locates a matchbox in one of the kitchen drawers and flecks sparks against her fingertips as she lights them up.

The smoke rises up like a gyrating body, tossing its silk veil over the vicinity of the room. Ellena raises her hands and guides the smoke to her patient’s body so that they might direct the energies she needed in order to promote the healing effect.

The Occassi breathes in, his chest expanding, as already the viscous discharge of his ichor begins to eject itself from his injuries in an oily slick. The stench of his bodily fluid was crude and vomitous as though swimming within it were the fossilised remains of several prehistoric carcasses. Ellena steels her nose against the odour and allows the melange of palliative incense to permeate it.

She rummages his bottom cupboard for a disorderly stash of medicinal herbs and salves she regards with the scorn of a specialist. She would have to improvise, it would seem. She makes a deliberate selection from the supplies, her distinguished magical senses able to ferret out exactly what it was she needed, and churns them into the detoxifying brew on the stove that she knew from recipes handed from mother to mother to mother.

“Drink,” she tells him and blows gently on the broth to cool it. She places the bowl to his lips like a mother to a babe and the Occassi grunts as he swallows, his xylophone abdomen twitching and jerking, as the narrow peak of several bullets eject themselves from his chest allowing his skin to sew up neatly. When it was done she attempts to clean his blood away, procuring a rag from the kitchen counter. As she swipes the first trail of slick the substance corrodes through the edges of the fabric until there was little left but an uneven square.

“Don’t,” he implores her, her wrist now shackled in his pacifying grip. “Your gloves will withstand my blood but the cloth won’t,”

She stops, nods slowly, and retracts her hand away from his grip before he catches it again. Anything to get away from this strange house and this strange being and this strange world she should never have encroached upon.

“You saved my life,” says the Occassi, a collision of confusion and consideration in his voice as though he were affirming the information and what to do with it.

“The brew only detoxified your wounds,” she explains with her chin demurely angled downward. “Your body did the rest,”

“Regardless,” he presses on with a casual dismissal of her modesty. “It is custom for one to repay the services of valour and aid in times of battle. What is your name, Mata?”

She blinks suddenly, his accurate usage of her title surprising her. “Paw,”

“Well, Mata Paw,” he samples her name like the fine crust at the edge of a delicacy. “It appears I owe you a debt,”


	4. Exquisite

Her breakfast had deteriorated into a mass of bloodied raspberries, disembodied chunks of puff pastry and confectioners sugar. Yet still, she kept at it, indulging in the assortment of flavours, the sour-sweet berries, the delicate wisp of crème fraîche that melted so light on her tongue. Solarites did not eat so much for sustenance as they did for sensuality though the nourishment aided in keeping their _ether_ stocked. Often, their meals would be just as decorous and ornate as their homes, so fastidious in their detail that you almost felt they weren’t made for touching, for tasting.

The current spread across their gilt banquet table was no different. Meals vied for attention beneath glass domes that were enticingly smothered with lavender honey and rosewater cream and fresh juices in jewel tones sat like coloured glass along the engraved rims of silver cups.

Laila sipped at her juice, her rosebud mouth tinting cherry-lacquered as she reaches over the table for another mille-feuille. Her mother’s dour stare halts her mid-pursuit however and she slowly allows her hand to retract from the table.

The Empress’ pastry had remained untouched and Laila couldn’t help but feel her gaze linger with a rather lustful intensity on the way the honey seeped through the pores of it, sunlit and scintillating as their blood. “Bring me a mirror,” she calls to one of the many mundane servers diligently waiting on them in an even line, a thread pulled taut that soon snaps as they begin to disperse like seeds in the wind.

One of them eventually manages to procure what she asks, a large square mirror with an elaborately carved gilded frame and acanthus leaf detail, the glass bobbling as they approach nearer, distorting their trim physiques.

The mirror is set before the Empress in easy reach as she sets down her cutlery, neat, and exclaims. “Jalal Azar,” and the mirror replaces her silk-sheathed reflection with that of the Captain of the Thalistan Chapter.

“Your Luminosity,” Jalal greets with a prideful nod befitting of the usual Seraji self-assurance.

“The sun has just struck first quarter, Captain, I pray you have good news for me to start my day,” her mother’s candied tone was warm and yet the undertaste of her inferred threat was so tantalisingly sharp.

Jalal winces as though he’d tasted something unsavoury. “My men were able to confirm a sighting of the Occassi traitor, I had two troops deployed to narrow down his last known coordinates and from updates, it appears he has been lurking in the far reaches of the Thalit jungle,”

Laila digested the words slowly and let them disintegrate like fallen ash in her stomach. She had not anticipated that Dominus’ capture would have been concluded so soon.

“And?” Her mother ushers that he go further.

“The last I had heard of my men they had taken up their silver to explore further, I am... afraid we have not yet heard back from them,”

There was a pause and then a whistle, so frail that only ears as finely tuned as Laila’s would be able to decipher it.

“How do you mean to say, Captain, that you have simply… lost track of two dozen men?” the Empress questions patiently, as though she really meant to offer a chance to explain himself. “You have misplaced them?”

“W-well… I…”

Only her mother was capable of plucking a Seraji of their tongue so deftly, theirs were a firebrand sort, always flapping as though they meant to fan out the flames and what they often spewed was no less scalding, no less acerbic.

“I see,” the Empress concludes, no further words necessary.

“Your Imperial Luminosity, the jungles are home to many feral beasts, even armoured with silver and high numbers the pursuit was a risky one. But until we hear back, we are unable to concretely update the status of our mission,” Jalal had begun to assert, to salvage the moment, but it had long passed for him.

Her mother had already withdrew, her copper-hued face now enamelled with boredom. “What you mean to say is that you have failed, Captain Azar,”

“I…” a flicker of brazen denial soon extinguished. “Yes, Your Luminosity,”

“And how do you mean to remedy this, your failure?” she prompts, her fingertips tidily aligned in a row.

“I will have another troop amassed at once to discover what became of the rest,”

“See to it that you do,” she tells him, “I do very well hope that nothing terrible has befallen your men, Captain, I shan’t dare to think what the families of those brave young men would say,”

“Neither shall I, Your Luminosity, I shall pray to Lucrezia for their safe recovery,”

Her mother allows the call to end there as the image of Jalal’s solemn expression scatters into pieces of confetti only to rearrange into the shape of her mother.

“Well that should teach me, never send a soldier to do a spy’s job. Not a lick of subtlety, it’s all about the bravado with them. Always getting into fights, always needing to assert themselves. Had a Sister been on the job, that Occassi upstart would’ve been detained and in my custody,”

Laila couldn’t help but agree. Before the war, the Sisterhood of Aurum had spun a fine gossamer of mystique, an interconnected mesh of lies, deceit and trickery that made them nothing short of infallible. To one exception. The most fateful exception. She still liked to think had it not been for King Erebus’ deathless nature then the original attempt on his life would not have thwarted, then perhaps her father-

“Seems as though I may have to call upon Darius,” her mother says and the assertion glides like a knife through a stick of butter, slicing off Laila’s thoughts mid-sentence.

She sputters gently at her cup of raspberry juice having suddenly swallowed too quickly.  It made sense for her to call upon him of course, though it did not escape her to see how it troubled her mother to admit to it. Darius’ encyclopaedic knowledge on the forces of chaos made him a rather permanent fixture in academic and engineering circles following his valorous service to the Crown as a consultant. With his seemingly depthless expertise, he’d unearthed many creations of malevolent origin from that very abyss, from the bioengineered beasts of war to even simple mundanities of home security systems. If anyone could catch Dominus, it would be him.

Which is exactly why she had to intercept.

“He has reason to want Dominus dead as much as you do, maman,” Laila offers, it was a silk-spun suggestion, frail and diaphanous and offered with a demure grace.

And he’d more than proven his loyalty to the Crown, having been the turning point that won them the war, in fact. Something that Laila knew troubled her mother greatly. _One should never allow a prisoner to forge their own bars_ , was how she had put it and yet it had been Darius who had masterminded the blood tracking device that allowed them to geolocate criminal uses of black magic and pioneered the Legion of Anti-Chaotic Enforcement. They had provided him with the iron and he had shaped the shackles. For that reason, she knew her mother liked using him sparingly but keeping him close all the same, which suited her just as well.

“Indeed, why is it do you think I gave him his castle and his throne and just about everything else he ever dared to covet?” her mother scoffs into a contemplative sip of her frothy beverage. “Yet I do not trust his ambition for I do not know what he desires, and an ambitious male who wants for nothing, who desires no true end, is capable of descent into the most unpredictable forms of depravity.”

“Perhaps he does it out of passion,” Laila says, thinking of the way he’d touched and kissed her just before the night he left. How his fingers had burst berry-blood bruises into her hips that were just as quick to heal.

“That he is passionate I have no doubt, yet passion for passion’s sake can quickly become an uncontainable inferno, directionless and aimless.” Her mother’s eyes narrow, they were just as blue as hers were but under-toned with shades of lavender. She picks up a piece of toast and slathers it with pale gold butter.

Laila wraps her lips daintily around the edge of her glass, savouring the residue of her juice. “Should you approve of this, maman, I would like to be the one to retrieve him,” she decides, punctuating her proposal with the setting of her glass. The thought of being near enough to feel his hands on her again kindled a bristle of synaptic sparks in remembrance of where they’d last been. Her mother had the gist of it at least - passion, when directed, could be a powerful motivator. She intended to use some of that passion for her own gain.

“And go all the way back to that dastardly country?” Her mother’s brow had arched considerably. “I was only going to send an envoy to fetch him, I shouldn’t imagine you hold fond memories of Mortos. And yet, perhaps a familiar face would sweeten him more.” She could see her mother contemplate the benefits of that. “Well, alright, though I must insist on you being guarded by at least two Lightshields, apparently the Mortesians have been suffering a rather dry spring, crops are low and the locals are especially prone to negatively receive anyone of high standing.”

Had it been anywhere else but Mortos she might have vehemently protested but she knew well enough the sort of damage just one Occassi could cause when motivated to do so, let alone several and especially when they were angry.

“As you desire, maman,”

Thus she excuses herself from the breakfast room and makes her way towards the stables. A lively cacophony of unicorn grunts and pegasus whinnies greeted her as she drifts beneath the vaulted arches with Moonbeam in particular kicking up a fuss, a large, sinewed mount with a silvery-white pelt. With a wry smile, Laila plucks a solid gold apple from the blank atmosphere and presents it to the beast for the taking.

“Ah, Your Radiance will spoil their appetite with that trick,” tsks the stable master, a tall and crevice-cheeked Thalit magi, often favoured for their proclivity with the livestock.  

“A little indulgence won’t hurt anyone,” was Laila’s demure riposte as she gently glides her fingers over Moonbeam’s velvet snout. “Now how’s my baby?”

The stable master escorts her to Polaris who emits a steamy snort through the wrought iron bars upon sight of his mistress. “He’s been fitted with some new shoes and recently groomed,” the magi explains idly as Laila bends her head towards her steed to nuzzle his snout with her nose. “I shall fetch Your Radiance his saddle,”

Polaris was a purebred white with a platinum horn and hooves of palladium, an occurring so infrequent it was almost the subject of myth. Her father had presented to her the mount on her sixteenth earthday and she can recall her shrill and whimsical delight, palm over mouth, as she unravelled the giant silk bow around his silken mane.

She’d forgotten how much she’d missed him, how Polaris’ proximity always managed to remind her. She strokes the unicorn’s wintry locks as reverently as she would have her father’s, so much like her own and yet not. He was never hers by blood as a Lightshield, a forest sprite, but she’d loved him with every pulse of her until the day he’d fallen by his own hand to seal Erebus away in his dimensional prison for good.

Laila swallows and breathes as though by doing so she might loosen the enclosure of the fist in her chest. Twenty years and Willem Rose’s death still held her in a chokehold for she’d thought perhaps, due to the extended lifespans of the Lightshields, she might truly have had forever. When she’d thought of her own future she’d always envisaged it as though flipping a coin into a well with no bottom: a life of endless catered whims and granted desires. How easily she forgets her own fortune had never been quite so readily shared.

The saddling of Polaris allowed for a release from such thoughts and she seized hold of his reins to lead him out into the courtyard where her escorts awaited her, Leander and Althea both, donned in their platinum filigree Lightshield armour with Leander’s encrusted with rubies and Althea’s encrusted with diamonds.

With a quick conjuring she transforms Polaris from her steadfast steed into a sleek white limousine with a platinum hood ornament and palladium wheel rims.

Leander lets out a low whistle. “Travelling in style, I see,”

“I cannot teleport us to the castle proper, Malvoir Keep is practically barricaded in magic. I can just about get us to the outskirts of Letum, and from there we will have to ride the cliffs which are much more suited to a hovercraft than hooves,”

Althea was the first to nod as she opens the door to the passenger carriage. “As you say, madamazelle,”

Laila slides inside with Leander scooting in alongside of her. He takes her hand just before they take to the skies. “You know you don’t have to do this. Go to the castle, I mean,”

She’d not realised her anxiety had been so overbearing, Leander only ever thought to comment when her emotions were of an erratic sought. She would not lie, she had never liked Malvoir Keep. The eerie drafts that always seemed to finger her with grasping hands. The too many locked doors rusted shut with disuse. The pulsating black shadows that were still warm with the residue of aliveness, like it was oozing the marrow of some primordial evil.

She remembers having braced for every corner like she expected it to reach out and snag her and the one time in which it had.

“Yes,” she protests and faces forward. “Yes, I do,”

* * *

She had not been to Letum proper since before the war, after her and Dominus’ betrothal had been voided. She found she had not missed this ancient city and its frigid landscape with its jagged, geometrical towers that mirrored the likeness of a vertebrae. Everything was layered with soot and gargoyles, the latter which Darius once mentioned acted as watchers for him throughout the country.  

As soon as the limousine cruises beyond the threshold of Laila’s portal, her eyesight is oppressed by a dank fog which the automobile glides through like butter.

“I have heard the air here is toxic,” Althea regards the fog with a solemn nod “or just about, it won’t harm you or me and the mundane locals have already adjusted to it. But when it’s come in thick like this it can bring a magi to her knees,”

Laila was used to Soleterea, a land of sun-drenched fields in ripe apple green where not a single thing was unworthy of being touched. She flips a switch to burn through the stain of the miasma collecting against the windows. From it, she can spot several Mortesians going about their day in the skeletal framework of the city, how finely they wore their stoicism as an enamel coating to their already steely visages. A few stopped and stared at the limousine as it passed, likely familiar with the imperial insignia emblazoned on the body of the trunk.

Polaris did not once falter even as their faces became grotesque in their disdain for the vehicle passing by and Laila made certain to shield herself from their surly looks, knowing just how powerful a curse cast from one’s harmful gaze could be.

The spires of Malvoir Keep looked even more foreboding as a silhouette curtained by pea-soup fog. It is said that the castle is almost entirely built from a hybridisation of metallic stone no longer known to magi called sangrestone, a deep abyssal black tinged with red. Because of it the walls were impenetrable to any breach from explosives to ramming logs. By legend, its construction was overseen by King Cerberus who is said to have withdrawn the souls from those of his trespassers and used them to accessorise the towering bronze gates that shielded the base courtyard of the Keep. That was why you could always see such meticulous detail in the statuettes there, why they seemed to writhe in such spiritual agony.

The castle had been the last to fall in the war and in the end they hadn’t even breached it. _Smoke them out,_ had been Darius’ sage counsel, _like fleas._ A spattering of reporters had already gathered at the bronze gates by the time they arrived by the castle, like a swirl of dust motes. They are a raucous thundercloud of question marks and winking photo-orbs as Polaris parts way for them with an aggressive rev of his engines which forces them all to take a step back.

So eager they were to be in possession of a celestial, to bathe in the glow of her starlight, as though by proximate attrition she might rub off a little of her eternal enskyment upon them. As the gates close upon the ravenous crowd, Polaris coasts his way into the courtyard and sputters to a slow purr as the steward emerges from the castle doors to greet them.

Ghouls were another acquired taste of Mortesian noble life and most of the highborn from the kings to the lesser lords appeared to make use of the shambling corpses. They were reanimations of those forsaken by society. Too wicked to ever know true rest. Necromancy was a forbidden art in Vysteria and gruesome besides; Laila always found herself looking slightly to the left of the indentured servant so as not to focus too firmly on his half-melted cheeks and the tulle-like flaps of fraying flesh.

The steward opens the door, Mordred she believes his name to be, and Leander is the first to exit, gallant and pale, a pearlescent pillar in the moonlight before Althea joins alongside him. They could almost be twins, these forest sprites, with their translucent hair, pointed ears and keen, sharp features.

Laila takes Leander’s hand as she exits and puts her first foot onto the snow. Warm. That was always the disorienting part. The land beneath their feet was a dormant inferno, a thousand dozing volcanoes poised to erupt.

“Good evening, Your Radiance,” Mordred’s vocal chords were worn and weathered, she’d always wondered what crime could be committed here to deserve such fate. “Prince Darius has been expecting you, if you would please join me I shall escort you to the dining hall,”

This required a traversing of the many cavernous tunnels of the castle halls. A tongue of red velvet that extended along the passageway leading them through the gaping maw of the building and into a constant steamroll of hot, heavy air like an exhalation.

“I do not like this country, Leander,” she soon hears Althea declare to her partner. “Their land is strange and unnatural, the earth is dead here but their buildings roar with life,”

Althea speaks as a descendent of those who swore their fealty to that of sun goddess Lucretia and all her earthly subjects. They are bonded to her vows to uphold the balance of the natural and all its indisputable laws and physics. It had been long since a Lightshield had ever claimed guardianship to anything but a Solarite as Lucretia's rightful inheritors, but Mortos to them was still the realm of the abominable.

“Come now, Althea,” Leander humours with his trademark youthful buoyancy “their interior design may be appalling I quite agree but at the very least the place holds… character,”

His hands spread as though to encapsulate the bronze-emblazoned ceiling tiles and arches of stained glass windows before them.

Laila herself glances above to watch the skeletal beams of a rib-cage vault pass from overhead.

“Must you make light of everything?”

A measured chuckle, thick as syrup. “Would it be me if I didn’t try?”

Laila could sense the energy of Althea’s growing discomfort, a gentle simmer at first, but with not much coaxing could it quickly become a sear.

“Corpses,” she goes on to say “they use corpses as their servant force, we all know the rightful place for a cadaver is in the soil where they can become one with the earth and give back so readily as what they have taken from it. To see one before me now, talking, walking, or at least making a good show of it-”

“Althea,” Laila interrupts “I understand this world may be foreign to you, but I must strongly advise that you guard your tongue wisely from hereon. Let us not forget that we are guests here,”

Though if Mordred had taken offense or was even listening he seemed to shield his feelings well. She tried to decipher his aura only to find a faint impression, likely due to his undead status.

When they arrive at the chambers, Mordred opens the doors. A red-gold light spills across the stone floorboards as inside the room is haloed in the waxy balm of candlelight.

“Announcing the arrival of Crown Princess Laila Rose of Soleterea,”

The occupants of the table stand immediately in her presence with Darius as the first to speak.

“Your Radiance, so pleasant for you to visit us.” He is crisp and genteel in a jacquard silk three-piece, something wolfish settling into the curve of his smile. “As you can see you’ve already caught me in the midst of a meeting. If I might introduce Delanus Levantis, Prime Minister,”

“An honour, Your Radiance,” Delanus says, clutching his middle and bowing before her. Something about the way he said it made it seem that this was the first Mortesian noble to mean his words and was not just spitting them out begrudgingly like the hard pit in the centre of a fruit. “My daughter Isadora has been practically begging for a visit to Soleterea, from what she’s seen on the teleglass she already much adores it. Especially the fashion,”

This surprised her, for Laila recalls the ways in which Occaselle would obscure their bodies as though they were shamefully guarded secrets while her own exuberance in fashion had so often scandalised. Modesty held little influence on Soleterean fashion for everything was built to be exquisite and insubstantial, much like the immortal herself, the kind of garments that left you more naked than if you were bare. Silks and chiffons and lace that coquettishly silhouetted one’s thighs, slinky straps and brazen décolletages and hemlines that were vulnerable to even the slightest of breezes.

Even her current attire followed suit; a sheer spider’s gossamer in white that was flowering with full springtime blooms that never once wilted even with her most strenuous movements. “Well, you must absolutely visit Soleterea, it’s an absolute dream this time of year when the gold and blue rose bushes are in full bloom. Try staying in Rosetta, it’s a picturesque little village out of the way of the Crescent if you want to soak in some atmosphere first before taking in the capital,”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” says Delanus.

“But back to matters at hand we must get you seated,” Darius shuffles his way out from the table to approach her and take her hand which he brushes against his lips with only the phantom of a kiss and she feels her skin bristle with the feel of his lips so close to her skin. _Stop teasing me, you cad._ “I see that you’ve brought your… Lightshields,”

His disapproval was evident as he escorts her to the guest of honour space, right on the opposite side of the table. Too far for her to get her own back.

“Ah yes, we came as a special offer, two for one half-price,” Leander asserts brazenly. He delighted in nothing more than knowing he was being obnoxious to those he held in low esteem.

Darius barely veils his disgust. “There is that famous wit again,” he says, before withdrawing Laila’s chair, the seat was polished bone with a foliate cutout and she notices several more examples of decorous carnage as she sits. The rug that extends beneath her feet is clinquant, flayed from the hide of a rare beast and the chandelier had been pieced together by the antlers of a Qarna buck.

Leander sits to the right of her and Althea to the left as several courses of food are served, marrow roasted soft in its bone, smeared with garlic butter and a dollop of caviar. They drink red, red wine with the viscosity of blood which is soon paired by its soupy counterpart. It is swimming with lumps of onion that were too easy to mistake as clots. Another acquired taste of Mortesian culture, the ghastly cuisine.

“So Your Highness, if we might resume to our earlier discussion,” Delanus’ lips are a rabid red as though he had just finished savaging a carcass. He dabs his mouth politely with a napkin. “The Erebus loyalists, what are we to do about them?”

Darius traces the rim of his glass. “Far be it from me to understand the inner workings of a naive patriot blind-drunk on nostalgia, but it seems to me that this is a mostly economic issue,”

“I would agree, for all the faults of your king father before you, Mortesians have come to associate his rule with a thriving period of national identity and economic prosperity. If we were to renew that spirit-”

“Given a few more decades Darkwater Towers could be a powerhouse, I already know that the rest of Vysteria covet my inventions and will pay quite handsomely to obtain them. Ten or twenty years and this period of recession will be but a distant memory,”

“You are, however, forgetting to account for the growing nationalism issue- ahem,” Delanus casts a rudimentary glance in Laila’s direction. “If I may, Your Radiance, it is probably not unknown back in Soleterea that your popularity rather leaves a lot to be desired,”

Far from unknown, Laila herself had made quite a study on the topic and brought up many suggestions on ways they might ease the burden of resentment only for her mother to dismiss it out of turn.  “I have discussed with my mother the benefits of exploring foreign aid, granting asylum, even a monetary loan to Mortesian banks as a display of good faith. She has been rather resistant to such gestures but I believe, given an insight to the severity of the situation, she can be swayed. Do you worry that these loyalists might turn violent?”

The two nobles exchange glances over their crystal. Their main course arrives, braised lamb heart stuffed with truffles and fatty goose liver served on a puddle of fortified wine reduction.

“I take that to mean they have already turned violent. No doubt my mother will have heard of this, and promptly asked of you to increase the already stifling military from LACE,”

“The noble houses themselves are quite divided on this issue but not all of us have forgotten our brief period of peace and the immense benefits of being included in your empire far outweigh the negatives, even if it never did go quite to plan with you and the late Prince Dominus,”

She couldn’t help but look away at the mention of him. “Yes, quite regretful,”

A slinking figure soon shadows the corner of the doorway and all energy in the room appears to redirect towards her mesmeric presence as she glides one leg forward between the parted pleat in her dress. “Apologies for interrupting, Your Highness.” Something sly and vixen had encroached upon her features that suggested she wasn’t sorry at all. “If I might have a quick word,”

Darius summons the magi forth whom Laila immediately places as a Seraji with her desert-warm complexion and loose, thick coils spilling through the valley of her exposed back. She approaches Darius with a generous sway in her hips and leans in close to press her red-lacquered lips to his ear, coyly covered by her palm, as though she were saying something tawdry. Part of Laila didn’t least doubt she could be doing so, as by the way the magi gripped his shoulder they were far from unfamiliar with one another.

Darius gives nothing away, merely nodding occasionally as the sly shadow of a smirk touches his lips. “Later,” he pledges and sends her away.

“Prince Darius,” Laila croons, smooth and honey-dipped “aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

The Seraji halts mid-stride and rotates to look at her, chin dipped on the point of her shoulder. She really was quite bewitching, she almost couldn’t blame Darius the temptation.

Darius however, appeared to be studying her alone and vacuums a slow, soft sip from the rim of his glass. “Princess Laila, allow me to introduce Lady Reisa Jahuar,”

Jahuar, if she recalled correctly, was a noble house of Seraj. So this must be one of Madhali’s spectres, trust her mother to station one right at his doorstep.

“Your Radiance,” Reisa purrs, making a full meal of the syllables. “Your Highness, if you may both excuse me I have some external duties to attend to,”

And she is gone again with a whiplash of coiled locks and with her absence comes the release from a once unnoticed tension that appeared to have been compressing down upon the air of the room.

Even Delanus appeared to have notably relaxed, which she paid particular attention to.

“Now, where were we?” Darius expresses with a swirl of his glass. “Ah yes, our little loyalist problem,”

“I believe I have something of a remedy to this,” Laila asserts, with a neat fold of her hands in her lap.

* * *

After dinner, she decides to visit Darius in his chambers to discuss the original purpose of her visit. Mordred ushers her up to his chambers which was located within the royal apartments of the Keep, a tall gangling tower nestled on the other side of the courtyard.

“Stay with Polaris,” she instructs Leander and Althea “I shan’t be long,”

“If you say so,” Leander couldn’t help but retort.

She gives him a lengthy stare but resists rising to his bait.

The apartments were smaller than the grand hall, quaint, but still held that aging majesty as Laila passes through stiff wooden walls, the kind they used to conceal spirits in barrels and left to mature. No bacteria would ever see enough oxygen for the rot to set in. The waxen portrait eyes of Darius’ ancestral clan followed her all the way up the steps of the building. She almost knew all of their names. Stories whispered to her between sheets as she’d passed from one brother’s bed to the other, how they’d each all been slain by their kin in legal combat, their spoils usurped. At the time she couldn’t think of anything more demoralising.

Darius had lit a lantern in his study. He’d often like the comfort of an open flame at his side rather than one provided by the geothermal energy the rest of Mortos used.

She slinks like a sylph into the room of black-lacquered oak and asphyxiating velvet. Her skin is emphasised by a warm, cosseting candlelit glow that expands from her like an open embrace. “So that’s who’s been keeping you company all these long, frosty nights?”

Darius is fiddling with some official-looking documents, enthroned on a seat of black tufted leather. He peers up at her when she speaks, his lips crooked in amusement. “She is a Seraji spy stationed here by your mother to keep me on my best behaviour, you needn’t be jealous.” He shuffles his papers into a stacked deck. “It’s unbecoming on you,”

“Oh I am horrifyingly jealous, just not of her,” she reveals with a saccharine smirk.

Darius chuckles and it cracks like shards of ice. “You know I don’t believe you are her type,”

“A pity,” she says and drifts over to make a throne of his elaborately carved desk. Gods, but these Mortesians didn't half enjoy their excessive depictions of sadomasochism. Etchings of pain and suffering and untold torment were lacerated into every surface. Darius told her it was their way of documenting their history, she'd not known what to make of that.

“So what brings you to Mortos? I know it must be imperative for how much you loathe it here,”

A protestation works its way up her throat, sharp and crystalline. “I don’t _loathe_ it here,”

Darius merely raises a brow in response and she deflates.

“My mother means for you to come back to Soleterea to aid in Dominus’ search more closely, I merely elected myself to deliver the message,”

His look of suspicion deepens. “And why is that?”

“Perhaps I wanted to see you,” she says and her face illuminates with a girlish simper as she leans her calf in between his knees “perhaps I missed you,”

Her leg was warm against him, tantalising, she could tell by that split-second shift in his features. “So what you mean to say is you had every means to travel here the past ten years and instead decided to admonish me for abandoning you.” He leans back then, once more unflappable in his manner. But then he’d always been a tougher one to crack, as impenetrable as the ice that settled here. She’d get him there.

“So perhaps I hoped I could try once more to appeal to you to help me find Dominus myself,” she heaves a sigh as though he’d spoiled all the fun of teasing around the topic.

He leans in to touch her knee and press it to the other one though she still feels the indent of his fingers when he moves away. “We’ve discussed this,”

“No, you talked and I listened, now it is time for you to listen to me,”

He spreads out his arms like he was beckoning an audience. “I’m all ears, princess, tell me what compelling argument it is you have constructed that I should want my brother alive,”

She reaches for his cloak next, the ones that all Mortesian nobles appeared to wear to denote their status. His was black velvet with a grey silk inline, adorned with emeralds and opals. Slowly, she unclips the brooch that held it together, it was engraved with the crest of his family name. “Is the fact that I’m asking you nicely not enough?”

He covers her hands with his to still her before stroking up the expanse of her forearms. “You know this is only giving me another reason not to want him back,”

“Jealousy is unbecoming on you, Darius,” she says, rebounding his earlier words back on him.

He cups her face, his thumb dimpling against the plushness of her lips as he traces the soft skin there. “Answer me honestly, is this because you’re still in love with him?”

Laila scoffs. “Darius,”

“I need to know,” he presses “if there is some part of you that still feels loyalty to him,”

“Maybe there is,” she says, before hastening to add “but it doesn’t change the way I feel about you,”

She could see that this did not satisfy him, that even a small sliver of her earlier affection might remain. “You know he means to destroy you, everything you stand for,” he reminds her.

“Yes, but if I could just talk to him-”

“Talk to him, like the way you and I are talking now, I assume,” he chuckles when she looks away from him with an aggrieved sigh, “you think I don’t know you by now…”

“You know that is not what I meant,” she admonishes, haughty and high-handed.

“Actually I don’t know that, but I’m sure Dominus would feel inclined to believe you regardless in the same way I keep wanting to believe you. It’s an affliction we both share,” he says, and something about the accusatory slant of his voice manages to spark her temper. “Tell the Empress to expect me within the next few days,”

There was something about the way he immediately stands to leave himself rather than to order her from the room that seemed to run deeper than propriety. Almost as though he couldn’t trust himself to stay near her. Had she been more even-tempered, she might have called after him. Instead, she chose to stagnate in her sulkiness, her ill-mood clumping syrupy-thick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided this is just going to be a taster sample because posting a first draft in a serial format is a horrific idea for several reasons. So if you have read this and would like to see more please feel free to follow my [quote blog!](https://essenceofequinox.tumblr.com/) And thank you so much for reading.


	5. Opacity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! So here are a few edits I've made to the story so far so you don't have to click back and read since I edited the old chapters too.
> 
>   * Echo is now a noble Occasselle (a promotion and slight rework of a subplot thread)  
> 
>   * Changes have been made to how Reisa came to be in the castle (she started off as a secretary to the Prime Minister)  
> 
>   * Delanus in the previous chapter is now the Prime Minister instead of a duke (also a promotion but more narratively relevant)  
> 
>   * Landour is now a rainforest and not a jungle (though, you know, they can be the same thing in some cases)
> 

> 
> Anyway I've made so many edits both large and small and it's a continuing process hence why I'm putting this on hold until I'm a good portion into the story. But you can still catch snippets on [tumblr](https://essenceofequinox.tumblr.com/), etc. I'll be needing moral support when NaNo starts. Heh.

Reisa is stood at the passageway with one hip jutted against the wall when the dour-mooded prince emerges from his chambers. “I believe the time for later may have emerged itself, Your Highness,”

He looks at her as though one might through a looking glass and she feels at once, magnified, as though his eyes were many-fingered and rooting around her cranial organ for insight rather than the other way around. There was a focused sort of acceptance in his gaze, like he'd already concluded she'd overheard his little lover's spat and was attempting to rationalise on how to proceed.

She cocks her head so slightly, almost like a child, and like a child she must appear before this ancient creature with all those centuries of ruin balancing out the scales of his mountainous shoulders and he wore not a single fissure in the smoothness in his olive-tinged cheeks.

“Not now, Reisa,” he says, and punctuates it by straightening the collar of his cape, but she was not so easily dissuaded.

“She’s really gotten to you, hasn’t she?”

He seemed unperturbed but she could sense that ensnared his attention when he finally came to look at her. His eyes were a fine liquid gold, they felt warm and filling when they gazed upon her flesh. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,”

“I mean how our Crown Princess has taken a shine to you, don’t think I didn’t realise the way she was sizing me up at dinner. I do hope she didn’t give you too much of a tongue lashing, not on my account.” But the horned curve of her voluptuous, velvety mouth said otherwise. “Good that I have just the thing to put a smile back on your face,”

He chuckles but it looked more like he was gnashing his teeth. “Actually, she was commending me on my good taste,” he takes great pride in informing her before retreating to his chambers. “You may enter,”

She doesn't have to check to know that the princess had already vanished from the vicinity. Though the light, limpid residue of her still remained, like leftover sunlight on a surface before the blanketing snuff of nightfall overtook it. And among this, the scent of flowers from her dress.

Darius closes the door behind with finality and walks round to his chair. With him now in the room she could watch as the shadows cast from the candlelight waxes and wanes from his bone structure. His features were that of a diamond’s - sharp and angular and penetrating. As he reclines with a feline agility into the tufted leather it strikes like a match in her mind that some might refer to him as a monster, but she could never recall a creature of such description being quite so inherently elegant.

“Well then, Reisa,” he says, with a polite gesture to signal his attentiveness. “Proceed,”

He balances one ankle onto the mountaintop of his knee. She could see from his posture that he was relaxed but alert and any offensive she may attempt on him would be briskly, and insouciantly, thwarted. The quicksilver speed of an Occassi was never to be underestimated. Not that she means to attack him of course, but an Auric Sister must be ever vigilant, prepared for any circumstance.

“I managed to uncover the person that you sent me to track,” she declares with some boisterous measure of pride as she drapes herself like a silk veil tossed over the arm of the chair opposed to him. Always something decorative, was Reisa, something to ornament the periphery of a scene. “It was a bit of a trek, following him, but I managed,”

He chuckles then, displaying two rows of perfect teeth, white and chiselled. He was too pretty, that was the trouble. The kind that could cause vessels to sink, could cause continents to rupture. The kind of beauty that signalled something cataclysmic was about to occur in its presence. “So, tell me what you discovered?”

And so she starts from the beginning of her journey. She'd been tracking loyalists to the imprisoned King Erebus on the side for weeks, a favour she'd only accepted from Darius on behalf of the Crown. But tonight while he dined with nobility she'd had a breakthrough.

* * *

“Yes, Mama I did receive the furs you sent me they were very pretty-”

Her Seraji is lazy on her tongue, a slow-dripping syrup, indistinct amongst the bodily pollution of the paved cobblestone she currently walks. She keeps her compact mirror close, slanted just diagonal enough to redirect the trajectory of her mother’s rapid-fire responses. In typical Seraji fashion, her mother spoke as though there were a fire lit beneath her and all her verbal exertions were as involuntary as a yelp of anguish.

“And yes I am treated very well in the castle you must stop your fussing-”

The streets of Letum were constricting labyrinths wedged between a callously constructed carapace of stone and steel. It was a futuristic ruin. A constant destabilisation between the ancient and the alien. Reisa had never truly understood it. How something could at once seem so primeval in its familiarity and yet so far beyond the bounds of her perception.

Skyscrapers nudged the underbelly of the red skyline whilst settling in like sediment was an alchemical concoction of coal-black smog. Occassi seemed to build their cities as though they aimed to reach for the skies and pluck the stars from it, before grinding them into pus and innards beneath their steel-capped boots.

Reisa straightens her headscarf which concealed the better part of her bushy coils and her face from the nauseating fumes and particle dust. The scarf was filtering silk and a sharp lashing of colour among the monotonous paint-smeared greys of the metropolis. She’d discovered it laid out for her inside a lacquered wooden case. It had been beautiful, chiselled with a gold stencil of a prestigious make that could only be imported from Zivar proper and tied with a thick plum velvet bow. That Darius, he did spoil her so.

“I shall be home for Harvest, give Baba a kiss from me,”

And she closes the mirror on her mother’s protestations with a soft click.

She reaches her journey’s end in an urban district concealed within a network of graffiti-tattooed alleyways. The streets were still warm with the kind of tawdry exhalations that only take place in corners mired with darkness. All this so that she might find the public house that matches the words stuffed carefully inside her pocket: _The Crimson Apple._

The debossed wooden sign sways and creaks as she makes a shove for the door still partially ossified in frost. As it opens she cracks the seal and allows a raucous fizzle of noise and laughter to burble through the doorway. A carpet of molten sleet greeted her boots as she entered and she allows that disdain to tinge her judgement for the rest of the establishment, though the interior showed much the same meticulous skill of Mortesian architecture. Those same vaulted, spinal arches bridged the way between rugged precipices where the leering facades of figurines appeared to be a swelling excrescence in the walls.

She orders herself a shot of _avitae_ from the counter, intending to make the drink last the entire duration of her visit. In Seraj, alcohol consumption was heavily constricted to bashful sips of sweet summer wine during feasts and events of worship but Mortesian alcohol had a potency that was almost hallucinogenic and she needed to keep her wits about her.

She lifts her glass and uses it to moisten her lips with the liquor as an Occassi enters with a description matching the individual she had been tracking for the better half of a month. His skin was blanched and colourless, and his eyes were green as a viper’s. Those distinctive irises were quickly darting around as he slides himself onto one of the unoccupied table booths with his back opposite to another Occassi whose attentions were engrossed by a newspaper he was reading.

What happens next would’ve escaped a keener eye or at least an eye who was interested in the following individuals. The Occassi with the newspaper, soon growing bored with his endeavour, folded the tabloid into a neat rectangle and then a square and with a diligence that one might obtain with something precious, smooths it against one of the tufted leather benches and then departs from the public house with ease.

Mere minutes after his departure the green-eyed accomplice soon stands and acquires the newspaper for himself but instead of a flat, creaseless surface, it at once began to broaden with a weight of a box sandwiched between the lips of the pages. Reisa can only acknowledge a faint outline of the dark wood before it is tucked into the pocket of her target and he seamlessly replaces it with a cigar in its stead all to the absent awareness of the uproariously intoxicated patrons and their dedicated servers.

Reisa encloses her fist around the glass of her alcohol and evaporates the contents to the very last dregs and approaches the Occassi, her hips loose and undulating.

“Need a light?” she inquires with a brisk snap of her fingers which produces a bright yellow flame on the tip of her pointer.

The Occassi raises a brow, the cigar butt dangling off the edge of his lower lip. “Nice showmanship.” He holds the body steady with his fingers and she sets it aflame. When he speaks plumes of smoke coil around his lips like elephant tusks. “Fire and an accent, I assume you must be Vysterian,”

“From Seraj,” she confirms with the emblematic alveolar trill on her tongue. She claims a seat at the booth and crosses her legs, long and lean strips of teak, one knee over the other.

“A land of sand and sun I’ve heard,” he says, and she can see how his eyes mirrored the motion of her legs. “What brings you this far up north?”

“Change of scenery I suppose,” she declares with an insouciant rise of her shoulders. “I’m in the mercenary business,”

She notes his unsavoury reaction. Seraj was well-known for their knights and their weaponry but it was the advancements of _ejdeha,_ their firearms, that had presented a worthy challenge to the otherwise unconquered Occassi and their exceptional swordsmanship. Or perhaps it was her femaleness to which he objected, the treatment of Occasselle here reached far corners.

“Rather bloody industry for someone so fair.” He takes another long drag from his cigar and she notices how his eyes were a rather hypnotic green up close, especially in the way they triangulated the curves of her form.

“I do not shoot the _ejdeha_ I merely tell others where to shoot from time to time,” and here, something sly flits across her sensuous mouth. “But I know my way around many weapons should it become pertinent,”

He tells her his name was Cassius, which she knew, among other pieces of information she’d gathered among her intelligence. But it never failed to amuse her how easily even a monster would become unmoored before a head of tousled bed-curls and bonnie brown eyes. For what threat was she to him, this mere mortal, no one ever expects poison to come in so pretty a phial.

“Will I see you again?” he asks as he accompanies her to the alleyway.

Moonlight was spilling against her shoulders like fresh cream as soft flakes of snow layer her hair. “If you’re lucky,” she says, and leans in to tuck her hands into his pockets, which is a gesture she knew many liked. She puckers her cherried lips into a barrel and presses it to his cheek with a wet smack.

“I have your scent now,” he cautions, the sclera of his eyes briefly webbing with black blood.

 _But I have your little box,_ she’d thought in satisfaction as she slips the container into her furs.

* * *

“Well, let’s have it then,” Darius requests once the retelling was over.

And what relish she takes to relieve herself of the little box from her person as though it removed from her instantly a heavy, inessential weight, like being surgically amputated of an extra organ or limb. Such a simple, ugly little thing the box was too if you were to procure her opinion, there was none of the silver lacquer or ornamental craftsmanship that Occassi often took the time to lavish upon their items of personal effect.

The box was of a simple black wood with no sheen or polish, utterly pedestrian in design, and yet it held such contemptible energy inside it that caused the capillaries in her brain to de-oxygenate as the acids in her stomach roiled with such vigorous nausea that she soon couldn’t wait to be rid of the thing.

Had Darius been met with quite a fervent response as she had upon its reception, he didn’t show it, rather his pupils had contracted to a microscopic sliver as he came to it regard it with recognition and wary.

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Reisa declares in indignation “what is it?”

“It’s a memory box,” Darius tells her with the same impatient condescension of a master speaking to a boorish novice. “Negative emotion is a source of empowerment for Occassi, rather like amaranthum or sustenance. We often extract it raw from traumatic memories. To contain it like this though is often reserved for ritual or spells.” He opens the topmost drawer and slides the box inside of it. “What remains of the target?”

“He’ll surely be returning to his masters empty-handed, I doubt he will last much longer,”

“You should hope so,” Darius warns “The last thing we need is a sloppy loose end,”

“Regardless of me finishing the job, I’m sure he’d consider an angry leader a much larger issue to contend with than a little spook from Seraj,”

“As you say,” says Darius “I will be taking leave to attend court at Soleterea come the morning, but I would like for you to keep on this and report to Delanus-"

A derisive snort was emitted at the mention of Delanus, for he'd still not forgiven her deception.

“Discover what these people are up to. I’ve been trying to penetrate the ranks of my father’s loyalists for some time but they continue to fester, like bacteria in a wound. I want them sterilised.”

“That sounds an awful lot out of my line of duty, Your Highness,” Reisa couldn't help but assert, lest he forgets that the chain of her command tugs in a direction that surpassed his immediate authority.

“You know full well I only ask this in the interest of preserving the Empire.” Darius recites like it was the alphabet. “Liaise with the Crown if you must, they’ll not disagree with my judgement,”

She thinks she might do just that, for she was due another report back to the Magister. She bows her head in dismissal before departing from his company.

To get to her quarters required a quick excursion through one of the subterranean passageways that stretched like several ungainly insect legs throughout the castle’s catacombs. Reisa never much liked to linger here for she misliked the uneven protrusions of the brickwork, crooked like teeth, the way it appeared ever-moistened with drippings of dew like sweat and oozes of black moss.

But what she misliked most of all was the feeling of accompaniment along her walk, as though within the air itself there awaited an intangible threat, some baleful energy that at any moment could have her at the mercy of it and all her years of dutiful training at the Academy could be rendered hopelessly obsolete. She would be once more as unarmed as a child.

Thankfully, the gods smiled kindly upon her and she made it back towards her guest quarters unharmed. There was little luxury to be found within her chamber but she’d grown rather fond of the thick plum velvet that upholstered the furniture along with the ancient black wood inlaid with ivory that kept her bed pillars sturdy and immovable. The wood was ornamented with the same louche carvings she had come to expect of the decor here and a heavy incense permeated the room that smelled subtly of smoke and the residue left on your hands from touching autumn leaves.

She removes her headscarf at the dresser and looks towards the silver disc of mirror to enquire it for a status update. A reel of images quantum-flickered into view as Reisa waited patiently for it to settle and reaches for the ox-horn comb on the countertop. She parts her hair into four partitions and applies a light, nutty oil from scalp to end with her fingers. By the time she’d finished the newsreel had rewound and began to play telling her in immaculate detail of a massacre that took place in the Landour rainforest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm trying a new thing where when I ask people to leave a comment I actually ask pointed things for you to answer in order to help me. I would appreciate if you answered the questions but you don't have to. It would just really help me out going forward. Also if any questions I ask don't apply you don't have to answer.
> 
>   * Did the dialogue seem natural to you? (Also, do you think Reisa was too combative or Darius too lenient)  
> 
>   * Was there ever a moment where you didn’t know who was talking?  
> 
>   * Do the scenes flow naturally and comprehensively at an appropriate pace? Did you ever feel like they were jumping around the place?  
> 
>   * Did you ever come across a sentence that took you out of the moment, or you had to reread to understand fully?  
> 
>   * Was the writing style fluid and easy to read? Stilted? Purple prose-y? Awkward?  
> 
>   * Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in facts, places, character details, plot, etc.?  
> 
>   * Do the characters in this chapter seem consistent and believable?  
> 
>   * Does Reisa seem believable as a spy?
> 



	6. Ephialtes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. Hm. Since I'm off tumblr for the unforeseeable future I figured I may as well start this shit up again. I don't have any specific questions to ask for this chapter since its so woefully short but if you have any specific questions or comments then please feel free to add them!
> 
> I'm just going to reiterate first draft mediocrity again so please be nice and give me ear scratches. But I'm up to 14 finished chapters so far so I think I'm going to do weekly releases and then go back to the drawing board, so to speak. So I'm gonna update the chapter count as I go along.
> 
> You should probably sub if you want updates since I won't be posting them on tumblr lol.

The first one he takes by surprise. He digs his fist in his vertebrate and explodes it through his chest. A vivid dispersion of blood and arterial matter coats his fingers in a hot, sticky smear. As the body skids off the edge of his knuckles he finds himself revealed to the rest of them. He, predator of predators, the reflective-eyed beast in the grass, pupils narrowed to a diminutive sliver.

He twinges something equally reptilian in their own brains, an almost reflexive recognition of _danger_ that summons their _ejdeha_ to slither into view and open fire.

He vanishes.

Within a blink he is behind one knight and severs his spine and unzips the throat of another with his extended claw. _God._ He forgets how very satisfying it is to feel skin shred like sheer fabric on the edge of his talon. The wet hiss of epithelial tissue splitting before the scalding temperature of blood spatter. How finely it comes away like cheese at the edge of a grater.

A wooden bullet lodges into his skin whilst he is busy ravishing his next victim, combusting on impact. Setâre wood, it would have to be. No mortal weapon was capable of causing him pain like this. His legs seem to acknowledge this as they give way, buckling beneath the char of smoking lesions that dappled his chest as another shot penetrates and then another. His torso is alight like he’d been used to extinguish the butts of a thousand cigarettes.

He lets out a pained, bestial sound, plaintive, as blades of grass are torn between his fingers in his quest to clutch onto his consciousness. He breathes heavily, a line of saliva dangling from the corner of his mouth as one knight approaches, nudges him with his foot. A foolish mistake to get this close which he soon realises as Dominus responds by ballooning every vessel in his cranium until they pop.

The rest of their bodies soon deteriorate into a mass of jagged knots at the will of his gesture. White bone shreds through taut skin, slimy red with snapped sinew. He dilutes the clarity of the air with their cacophony of cries and animal grunts. Fragments of gore flicker through his vision in a disorganised reel of images. He is stood in the aftermath - the scattered jigsaw pieces of their bodies, most of them degraded into unrecognition, an abstract mosaic of discoloured bone and liquefied flesh.

It is the flesh that lingers in his nostrils when the recollection ends and among it, the polite interruption of a tropical storm-

Dominus springs upright as the foreign stench chafes his hypersensitive nostrils, his claws unsheathed, his fangs dangling loose from his aching gums, primed for attack. It takes a few sobering breaths to calm those animal senses, the way they twitch and sputter like the severed end of a livewire. He can assess that any danger in his immediate vicinity was minimal and the gently burgeoning tropical storm of scent (frangipani, wild rose, berries) was from the physician he’d happened across in the forest.

He can hear the swish of her skirts and the soft pad of her bare feet against the kitchen tiles, those beads on her petticoat pattering like a light summer rain. He doesn’t yet sheathe his claws as he traces an exploratory digit against his chest finding it satisfyingly smooth and free of the wheezing bullet holes that had previously burnt his skin to blackening. Even that fetid odour of necrosis has vacated, though his skin is still marred by dried layers of filth and rotting vegetation.

As he elevates from the roughened makeshift sofa he discovers with a scowl that he’s left browned streaks against the throw from the indentation of his body. His throat rumbles in annoyance, revving like a tiny motor engine, before he discards any thoughts of spring cleaning in favour of confronting his overstaying guest in the partition over from his.

It never fails to mollify him how easily a person might display their back to him, even under the knowledge that he was temporarily pacified by sleep. And the Thalit woman is almost ludicrously unguarded from him - from the easy exhibit of her back to the vulnerable strip of supple brown midriff that parted the frilled trim of her bodice from her petticoat.

He can reach over and fracture her neck right now, with something that long and frail it needn’t take more than a mere flex of his wrist. Perhaps with even a hefty enough tug on that dark cloud of hair. He watches her hands move as she tidies the kitchen, the long, elegant fingers neatening the untidy rows of his herbs.

It had been a long time since he had laid eyes upon a maid, not since Laila in fact, and it was certain that his Solarite bride eclipsed the healer like the sun. Her breasts were modest, yet well-formed with dark nipples obscured beneath the cotton of her bodice. She was pretty in a soft and unassuming way, she didn’t command one’s attention in the same way that Laila might have and often did but she didn’t suffer for it. Yet he could not dare think of touching her, or even think it permissible to try. Suddenly, he felt furious with her for being here and arousing desire in him for contact. Did she not know whom she had let her guard down to?

“What are you doing?” he asks, undercutting her careful routine with a sharp lash of his tongue. He watches all the tension wind tight in her shoulder muscles before she releases and turns to him with a dusting of cinnamon blush on her cheeks.

“I didn’t want to leave in case there were any complications,” she explains with one gloved hand rested against the dining table. “You still appeared to be in very rough shape,”

Dominus clasps his hands behind his back in stationary repose. “The bullets were a nuisance for certain but not enough to kill, especially not me. The only way to kill an Occassi is total decimation of the heart or body. So they would’ve used a stake if that was their end. For whatever reason these knights wanted me alive but incapacitated,”

It was a mere vocalisation of his own internal hypothesis to the exclusion of any interjection of debate or input but then she speaks again and stretches taut the bowstring of his temper with an arrow set to launch.

“It is likely they noticed that you were not marked,”

His brow bends in annoyance. “Marked?”

“On your neck, like this.” She lifts her heavily inscribed hands that were patterned with natural motifs in whimsical loops and swirls that upon close inspection he could see were animate with every pulse of her skin. “All Occassi are required to have a mark,”

“You mean to brand us like common cattle?” he seethes, not realising the extent of the indignity his people had suffered. To leave a mark upon one’s skin was profoundly intimate and when not strictly reserved for wedlock it had been used as a humiliation tactic in times of Occassi warfare for centuries. It had been so when they had taken the Northern lands of the Qarnun to the cavernous dwellings of the Kattari. An indentation of their fangs along their neck, to show that they had been mastered. In his rage he makes a forceful gesture to one of the stray glasses on the counter and watches it fragment to glittering shards by a mental invocation.

He needs to feel something shatter, to dislocate and come apart at the sheer force of his will. For he is true chaos, the root of all destruction and decomposition, the drought that shrivels the wheat fields, the cancer that rots in the minds of healthy cerebral tissue until it degenerates into maddening porosity.

The Thalit huddles into a corner in surprise but his rage has blotted her out.

“I think I should leave now,” she decides rather vocally and makes haste in departing from the shack. He doesn’t stop her. He barely even acknowledges her departure until he realises her scent had evaporated from the room like the last dregs of mist in midday. But by then he is past caring.

He strides through his living quarters with aquiline purpose to the little boxed square he deigns to call a bedroom. The walls had been papered over with maps, journal entries, strategic plans all littered with arrows and illustrations and curling at the corners with age.

All this time he’s spent mulling around in the wilderness like he was retaking his First Rites whilst Darius seats the throne that rightfully belonged to their father. _No,_ his mind corrects, remembering how his father had fallen along with the others. _To him._

He still remembers the final battle on the tundra, his dead comrades being gnawed to tiny gobbets by an oversized maw, the bioengineered monstrosities borne of his brother’s fiendishly calculating mind. Even at night, always at night, his mind is shadowed by the gooey crunch of his own sinew and bone disintegrating beneath their chiselled wooden teeth. It was by virtue of some higher power that he’d survived, some divinely given judgement that had yet decided that the last grains in his hourglass was not to consist of his moment. And what has he to show for this salvation?

No, he’s wasted enough time hiding and this recent ambush by the knights has forced his hand. He has to make his move. And he is determined to have it be a useful one.


	7. Pastoral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another short one and mostly acts as a character-building chapter for Ellena so again I don't really have too much to say here. On a rewrite when I have all of the plot sorted out this one will probably go under construction to see if I can pull it together more tightly but I don't see anything inherently wrong with slower periods of character development since this is very much a character driven story.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Next up we meet Echo.

Ellena runs through the forest. She runs until she can’t hear anything but the sound of her own heartbeat - not even the errant caw of the parakeets or the mammalian disturbance of dholes fumbling in the bushes. The trees watch her as she went, ever nosy, ever prying, their buxom trunks interlocked like the bars of a prison. 

Shaggy shawls of leaves as dense and tight as her father’s curls appear to recede like an aging hairline and the horizon begin to flatten into the dense greenery of mossy rooftops. It is a sign that she’s made it into Landour proper though the threshold has been gradually eaten away by the more stubborn of the herbage, like a watercolour left to run over the edges of its illustration. 

They’d never tried to erect a more permanent marker between that of the town and the rainforest, they’d never before presumed the arrogance to do so. For they belonged to the soil and it was to the soil that they will end. And nature was always going to get back what was taken from it, no matter how much you held up your hands in trembling resistance to ward it back.

Ellena pads her way into the circled arms of her cul-de-sac like a lost child into the embrace of a mother. Even the air felt different here, losing all the dense humidity of the rainforest to soften into something oven-warm and fresh. Here is where her home sleeps with the pastel green door and its delicate ironwork that coiled like climbing vines over floral stained glass. By the time she stops for breath, the shelf of her breasts is moistened with sweat and her skin is buzzing like crackling static has generated between her skin and the blanket of fresh air. 

The newspaper had already made its rounds and is awaiting her as her toes skim her dried straw welcome mat. The shimmering mirage of today’s headline image ensnares her as does the fine blank print that titled it: WILD BEAST SAVAGES ARGENTINE TROOP.

She lifts the tabloid directly into her line of gaze until the article’s text is brought sharply into definition which details the elaborate construction of a leering juggernaut in the jungle, a gobbling goliath of magi who had shredded its way through two or so dozen men until they were unrecognisable shambles of bloodied meat.

Ellena loosens her grip at the paper to find that she is cold suddenly. She can feel the leisurely straggle of a sweat drop as it spidered its way across her open neckline. She slaps her open palm against it, smudging the sweat trail as it fell, before rustling around her pockets for a key that she shakingly zig-zags anywhere except the actual lock. 

She stops herself with a casual chastise and tries again. The key inserts into the lock with ease and she barricades herself inside. She walks herself back from the door with hushed breaths as though she feared at any second the hinges would burst and the wood would fragment like brittle bones, paving way for the Occassi who sought to finish what he’d started.

The newspaper is still in her hand, she soon realises, and she can sense the ink of the untruths she just consumed distorting beneath her sweat-stained fingers. She allows its release onto the carpet with a noisy flutter of pages, almost with disdain. If there was one thing she’s learned from this so-called purveyor of enlightenment it is that no mindless animal was the architect of such a massacre.

The kitchen sounds empty so she takes off her slippers at the landing and heads there first. The red-orange bruise of dawn was still imprinted upon the walls so she assumes that both Odella and Mariam were still tucked up in bed. She busies her hands with the kettle on the stove for the sake of something solid to lay her hands upon, to anchor her to the indisputable existence of this present tense. The last several hours still hold an eerie unreality, a campfire glisten, like hearing a story that happened to someone else. 

She selects her tea, (chamomile was always good for nerves) and then retrieves her favourite mug, a misshapen product of a child’s sickbed project - hardened clay painted over with crooked white flowers by an unsteady hand. The child had died shortly after painting it and she found that she couldn’t let it go. She’d always been predisposed to sentiment.

“Ela,”

The kettle squeals like a babe disturbed from slumber as she swivels round to see Odella in her short ruffle nightgown, her braids still nestled tight inside her bonnet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to startle you,” she goes on to say and Ellena becomes intensely aware of how deeply her nails were scraping against the kitchen counter.

“You didn’t,” she denies and she lifts the kettle from the fire to fill her cup, followed by a spoonful of honey for sweetener and watches the wisps of steam. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be awake, would you like some tea?”

“No,” Odella makes a soft gesture of refusal “it’s just that you didn’t come back at all last night, and Mariam and I- well, I, was worrying about where you’d gotten off to,”

Ellena taps out an erratic rhythm against the kitchen counter. “I had to attend to an emergency patient-”

“Yes that or she had stolen away in the night into the arms of some affable rogue who kept her out all hours.” Mariam emerges from the shadows into the kitchen as though the shadows have made her and leans languidly against the doorway. “So who is this mystery magi, Ellena? I hope he is quite rugged,”

“Mariam,” Ellena’s voice heightens in admonishment. “There was no “rogue” as you speak of,”

“You’re blushing,”

She is, she can sense it, the dusted cinnamon tint was oven-warm against her cheeks. She’s always been too easy to rouse, a fact that her sister very well knows. “There was not,” she repeats.

“Calm down, I was jesting, though gods only knows it would do you some good to diverge from your schedule of running straight to work and back again,” Mariam observes with a soft cluck of her tongue as she reaches for the kettle. “I’d say ten years was a decent enough mourning period, wouldn’t you Odella? Far surpasses my record of a month, well, just about.”

“My fiance died, Mariam,” Ellena reiterates, her cheeks now burning from a different source of emotion. How is she to move on from someone she had promised her forever to and who had given her his own? Even if that forever had been a mere blink and a yawn in comparison to her own. Mariam had always been well-known for a variety of skills but tact and sensitivity were ones that alluded her. 

“I understand,” her sister responds, hand on heart “but that doesn’t mean I want to watch you bury yourself alongside of him,”

Ellena’s lips began to part with the steam of her retort, before Odella, rightfully, robs her of the moment.

“How about breakfast?” she interjects, clapping her hands together “I was thinking black beans, some plantain, I think we still have some eggs left over from your last trip to the farmer’s market,”

“Not right now,” Ellena declines “I think I’d rather have a bath first,”

She needs something to cleanse her of the encounter with the Occassi and his malodorous blood. 

“Just you then, Mariam, I assume?” Odella asks with a trill of knowing laughter in her voice.

“You’ve never known me to turn down food, have you?”

Ellena takes towards the stairs as the final ebbing laughter of her sister and her beloved distorts into indecipherable humming. Her fingers enclose around the gnarled, sinuous branch of the bannister as she ascends the steep steps, two at a time, comforted by the chorus of arthritic creaks and groans it gives her until she reaches the landing. 

She knows every nook and cranny of this home. Every weak spot, every crackle of age. For it is her craftsmanship that has moulded and shaped its character as though she reared it from a babe. She who papered the walls, embroidered the fabric, upholstered the furniture, it was her paintings that were carefully suppressed behind polished sheets of glass. Bucolic settings of untouched greenery to complement the natural motif of the furniture.

She passes through her pastel yellow bedroom and its quaint femininity to enter her ensuite. Her tub is a sunken stone pit in the corner of the room with a waterfalling spout. It is bordered with mosaic and deliberately placed sticks of incense whilst perched beside it is a porcelain etagere which displays a circlet of handcrafted soaps and bath salts, as well as her pretty-coloured phials made from diamond glass, tied with eggshell bows.

Ellena disrobes and places her clothes atop one of the many outstretched branches that had grown out from the crevices in the walls. Her feet graze leisurely over the fur throw rug as she makes a selection from her phials, oils from the far reaches of the empire, powdered goat’s milk and olive oil from the orange deserts of Seraj, star anise from mountainous Aikha, rosemary and lavender plucked from the sun-saturated fields of Soleterea and honey and sage from coastal Malakia.

She fills her bath with water and the herbal concoction and braves the steps down into the tub knowing that the local hobgoblin will have ensured a comforting temperature due to her diligent payment of biscuits and milk. As she sinks she allows the swirls of lavender and sage to stroke against the ridges of her limbs. Her heavy curls swarm above her as the magnificently detailed ceiling mural soothes her with its vibrant gold-flecked patterns and swirls of floral design.

Then suddenly her vision is invaded. An oil-black spillage of a shadow that forges into a hand, reaching for her. 

Ellena surfaces immediately into any empty bathroom, no soul present except for her own thundering heartbeat.


	8. Umbrageous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot more Occassi lore in this chapter and just more of an insight into Occassi behaviour overall. They are, in the end, monsters and apex predators and so they are intrinsically amoral (think blue and orange morality rather than black and white) and so what might seem cruel and unnecessary from a human perspective might not necessarily translate the same way to them. 
> 
> In particular with predators there needs to be prey and there are a lot of subtle dynamics of power between Occassi who are in some way marginalised and those who are deemed as being beneath them. Also it just really bothers me when people hold back with monster girls in comparison to their male counterparts and Echo's chapters so far are definitely the most emotionally discomforting for me to write. I'm genuinely glad she is the only perspective like this and I don't know how people can stomach constructing entire worlds around brutal patriarchies (though I have my suspicions...).
> 
> I'm changing up the Occassi noble titles and making them suffixes like Darius Rex (as in, T-Rex, shut up it amuses me) Darius gets to keep the king title since I'm considering Mortos as being in a client state arrangement with Vysteria where they are still technically sovereign but heavily economically dependent upon them.
> 
> As always questions and comments are welcome and thank you to all who have done so up to now. I have a [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/A343485U) here for anyone who would like to offer support to me in a different way (and since this is my own content it shouldn't have any legal problems).
> 
> Anyway next up Darius heads off to Soleterea.

In the cosseted intimacy of her room Echo blacks out the white of her eyes and cushions her senses, delving deep within the pulsating core of her power. She disappears into herself like a swimmer’s body into a lake, leaving behind only a black velvet ripple. From that ripple, she attempts a tear, a bid to tear off a piece of her consciousness and externalise it as a black silhouette in the room, an inky amorphous mass which she renders into form with just a pledge:

“Dominus,”

Her shadow seeks his own over the frozen tundras, past the depths of the Crysteaen Sea and the humid treetops of Vysterian country. And she _sees._ She sees his deflated form half-rotted by pests and plants and she sees the girl who digs him out. Her shadow reaches out with over-eager talons and the clumsy, tentative grip of a child as it latches around the ankle of the Vysterian girl, the healer, and trails her steps to her squalid little village home and there in the stuffed over-warm kitchen she hears a name.

 _Ela_.

The image stutters and clouds with static fuzz as Echo is forced to release her hold once the intrusive pangs of a migraine begin to settle. She uses the last reserves of her willpower to snatch the pencil at her side and sketch her face, the long lean cheeks, the full quivering mouth and the wide, vulnerable prey eyes of a doe.

“Mistress-” came the errant caw of Ravenna as she fiddles with the door handle of her bedroom.

After the sketch is done Echo takes it up and scrunches it, rolling it tight into a jagged little ball before turning it into char in the plump cushion of her palm. She’s blown the embers away by the time her nursemaid arrives, leaving her exposed to the full blade of her temper.

“What have I told you about entering my chambers without permission?” she snipes, her a voice high and soft peal of a dinner bell chime as she slides off the bed, tiny limbs first, and scuttles towards her nursemaid. “Unless you want a repeat performance of your last discipline?” She gestures towards the garishly healed cross-stitch scar on her cheek that had resulted from the last tiny surge of her repressed temper.

Her ghoulish maidservant quivers which causes quite a loud, undignified rattling of the palmette-bordered dish cradled within her knobbly twig-like fingers. “Dear mistress, please, I only meant to present you your breakfast,”

Echo inflates her insubstantial bosom and with the frail breeze of an exhale she points with the same calm deliberation towards her bedside. “Well set it here then,”

The servant obeys, the silver-lidded dish still chattering between her rheumatic appendages as she unveils it to reveal a bowl of oatmeal smeared with sweetblood jam and a light scattering of nuts and wild berries.

“Hm, well already from the look and smell of it I can see that this isn’t what I requested. The porridge is lumpy, the jam too runny and the berries are overripe.” Echo tosses the lid over it in dismissal. “Make it again and do it properly this time, or I shan’t be quite so pleasant,”

Once her nursemaid has fled to do her bidding Echo reaches out with one hand and quickly reforms the once disintegrated drawing in the palm of her hand, watching as the invocation tinged the tips of her fingers a sooty black. She slides the art safely within the confines of her bedside drawer and climbs once more into bed to await her breakfast.

Ravenna soon returns with a steadier hand and a smile etched into her wrinkled skin that seemed to scrawl across her lips like a squiggly line. “Here you are, my dearest,” she reveals her second attempt with a flourish and had even playfully arranged the berries into the shape of a smile.

Echo can’t quite find the heart to keep feigning irritation with her so instead she picks up the bowl and spoon and starts taking dainty, modest sips of oatmeal.

“Once you are done, mistress, your father has bid you see him in the drawing room,”

The spoon almost slithers out of her grip. “Can it not wait until later?” she pleads, the almost willful ignition of her earlier spite has been brusquely stomped out like a boot over a flame.

“Afraid not, dearest, now eat up and I’ll pick out your dress,”

There is nothing more that Echo wanted than to clutch at the velvet drapes that lined her intricately carved burgundy bed-frame and draw them forth but she knows such petulant acts of rebellion would do nothing to stall the inevitable so instead, she eats a little slower, a little sulkier.

Ravenna creaks open the doors of her polished black armoire and lets stale air wheeze out with a cluster of dust motes before running her fingers through fine soft wool, lustrous velvets and snug furs cut with calfskin leather that were immaculately arranged by colour and category inside her wardrobe. Just over two decades worth of investment Augustus Veritis had sunken into his prized jewel of a daughter and she knows he intended to collect upon it.

Echo wonders when she’d learned to see the mounting gemstones and dresses that her father had lavished upon her as proof of her debt rather than his devotion. Her mind rummages through the desk drawers of her memory and singles out the fuzzy imprint of the ruby parure he’d presented to her upon the receipt of her first blood. She remembers the furious glow of them, like congealed molten flame, how she’d almost been afraid to touch the welling teardrop shapes as though it might singe her fingertips.

Her father bade her wear it for the upcoming gala that evening and she’d been all too eager to make a spectacle and pierce envy into the hearts of her peers and brand inadequacy into the egos of their own fathers. She’d gotten her desire of course. Only the one on display had been her newly blossoming body as her father toted her around like a five course meal in silk stockings to the spectating critique of his distinguished associates.

Thus, a shift had been marked, as the grisly demise of what was once a pleasant girlhood became an apprehensive dip into shark-infested waters. But her father had a rather regal shark in mind and he could only hope that the power burgeoning within her core would present a delectable enough bait.

She finishes her porridge and lets the spoon drop with a definitive clatter as Ravenna selects a black woollen garb bordered with a square neckline of sheer lace netting which crept into a high neck collar. Ruffles sprout like beards of ivy below the top of the bodice, above the collar and around the cuffs.

Echo allows Ravenna to sheathe her into the garment and close the hooks as she latches her finger absently into the satin ribbon ties at the cuffs and longs to feel them unravel with a sharp tug.

“Ah, how long your hair has grown!” coos Ravenna as she weaves two heaps of the burnished black mass that draped her spine like a curtain and pins it back with a varidium hair comb set with emeralds. “You could tie a noose out of it,”

 _And use it to throttle her way to freedom._ In the mirror, she looks a faded impression, practically see-through. Her skin inherited the same ghostly pallor of Mortesian stock which marked them separate from the royal House of Calantis and their toasted olive hue that was said to be proof of their descent from the daemon god’s trueborn son Callus who was dusky of skin. It was a hue that blessed other houses but not once has intermarriage ever diluted it from the fairest skinned to rubicund.

But still there are discrepancies in her here and there, her frame being of particular notice. Had she been a magi she would simply be small but in Occassi terms, she is practically diminutive. She holds none of the imposing height and robustness of the typical Occassi build, particularly the lithe musculature and buxom silhouette that was so routinely common in the female of the species.

Her slender, pebble-black eyes and frail features were courtesies imparted by the Aikhan mother who borne her and perished for the trouble. Half-breeds are practically unheard of in the Occassi race though many futile attempts have been made to rear the malformations. Most never made it out of the cot, others withered swiftly in the womb or slithered out cold in childbed. Such fates were common even amongst the purebred, but she is the first and only survivor of her heritage, half-magi and half-beast.

She pulls away from Ravenna’s fussing hands. “That’s enough for now, Nanny, you may go,”

Her nursemaid bows and bids her farewell leaving Echo brave the winding staircase in the descent to the drawing room where her father awaits. Though it is morning a thick overcast still tented the skies and dimmed the sun to a twilight setting. The candles cavort behind their glass lamps as she walks the hallway past the filmy-dusted artwork and the untouched heirlooms until she sees, spilling across the Seraji rug, the windowed bars of reflected light from the crack of the drawing room door.

“Come in, child,” her father’s voice rumbles like flat bass as she pushes through the door to present herself to his scrutiny as she had many times before, while he sits impersonal and proud on the makeshift throne of his armchair and crackle of the roaring fireplace divides his features leaving one half-shadowed in gloom. “Sit,”

She obeys with a demure incline of her chin and places herself upon the tufted stool before him.

Her father is bouncing his ankle patiently until she is seated before reaching over for his glass of black tea paired with cream cheese and black cherry tarts. “What is this I hear about you visiting the castle? I don’t recall you requesting my permission to do so,”

Through the loop of her ribbon does her finger go, before she begins pinching at the fraying thread of her lace cuff.

“Stop fiddling and answer me, child,”

Echo turns rigid. “I- needed to see the rex, father,”

“Did you now?” Her father seems endlessly amused as he sips his tea and then quietly balances it on the edge of his kneecap. It was the eldest of the ruling line her father had picked out for her latest shackle. Darius Calantis, a bastard, a blood-traitor, shame and scornful ambition sewn into the seams of his very conception, and yet somehow less objectionable to her than the once trueborn heir that was his brother. “You should never pursue an Occassi, Echo, let that be my lesson to you. We are creatures of prey, after all, and the interest will go out of it quickly if you don’t let him hunt you.”

And yet what if she didn’t want to be hunted, preyed upon, devoured? What of her instincts and the crawling itch in her gums that sought to shred meat from bone? Not that it ever mattered, her desires, she’s come to learn of that long ago.

“Do forgive me, father,” the sloe-eyed girl requests as she neatly arranges her palms in her lap. “I was hoping perhaps if I could show myself useful, exhibit my powers to him, then it might-”

“You are never to show your powers to him without my supervision,” he tells her sharply, his voice booming. “At one and twenty you are an Occaselle grown, Echo, no longer a little girl-cub but you cannot simply thrust yourself into matters of Occassi without proper coaching. Darius Rex might have sweet words and kind smiles but don’t think he won’t hesitate to devour you and spit out the bones if you bear yourself to him too willingly. You want to be a regina, don’t you?”

Her head bobbles like a nodding figurine. “Yes, father,” even if knows she is merely vacating one prison for a fancier set of bars, at the very least this one would provide her greater roaming space.

Her father retrieves a tart from his tray and offers it to her. “Then you will do as I instruct,”

She receives the cake from him and nibbles at the fine crust in deference before taking an even larger bite to taste the feather-light flutter of cream and the tartness of the cherries.

“Now run along and return to your studies, your harpsichord tutor awaits you and after that you have blade-dancing,”

Echo nods once more in obedience and gathers up her skirts to exit the room in a billow of thick, rippling wool before she finds herself once more in the passageway and starting towards the area where she knows her tutor might be waiting. Yet just before she reaches the door handle she pauses, her fist clenching as she hears the pattering footsteps of a ghoul arriving to presumably once more harry her with another order.

She grits her teeth as anger plumes in her throat like black smog and with a sharp pivot, her fangs descend to slot within the tender, exposed flesh of a throat. She bites down hard, sinking her creature canines through the thin layer of waning muscle and stringy ligament and twists the frail, desiccated spine until the head dislodges with a hollow pop.

She spits out the head of the manservant and swipes the rotten blood away with her backhand. He tasted foul. The first ghoul on the scene arrives to see her wan pearlescent face with the rosy doll cheeks and her sleek, ornamental passivity as she stares at the decapitated head on the floor as though she is seeing through it, divining something from it.  “Well don’t just stand there,” she demands with a cool and clipped authority “clean it up,”


	9. Paradisal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so big update this time can I have a show of hands on who's still with me?
> 
> I wanted to ask people who are reading at the moment if there is any specific reason that leads you to comment vs not comment. Are you bored? Do you just not know what to say? Is it because you've seen some of this content before?
> 
> Because its been a few updates and I noticed a lack of response and I'm not entirely sure what to chalk it up to. So I basically just wanted to make sure that you're still here, for one, lol and if there are specifics behind the commenting issue.
> 
> Just a couple of questions I have in any case: what characters do you like and why? How are you finding the prose?
> 
> ANYWAY I digress I think I'm officially changing my posting day to Sundays.
> 
> Next up Laila picks up where we leave off.

The lean, black car of Darius Rex hovers menacingly above the streets of The Crescent as though it were a beast in the savannahs and the subjects below its prey. Its low, murmuring engine seem to rouse the sleepy homes of the Capital and its fantastical inhabitants as Darius looms as a vague apparition behind tinted glass and attempts to recapture the sights he has seen many times before and yet always remain anew in the imprint of his memory.

Soleterea was like nothing that could be described, forever existing at the periphery of one’s imagination. Like the vestige of a dream from which you have just awoken. And yet, small just barely decipherable particles of it remained. Pastel-coloured facades that flit ephemerally into view. Frameworks that were homegrown from raw crystal. Ornamental stucco and picturesque pediments and friezes that would ignite in animation with embellishments of brass and gold leaf.

All this and more appears to restore the elusive image in his mind, though he knows it will be once more snatched from him once he looked away for too long. Crystal Palace winked in the distance like gemstone refracting sunlight, its pillars of marble and alabaster standing stately and gracefully aged as Darius’ flying-car politely demands entrance at the winding golden gates.

The Courtyard is in full summer-smitten bloom as buds of solid gold roses poked brazenly out from their thorny bushes. Fleuriebirds sought to suckle from their nectar, their ribbon feather tails billowing in the breeze and their petaled plumage scattering.

A Lightshield opens the car door as Darius steps out with his own guards alongside him. As common specimens of the Occassi race they were tall and broad-chested and stacked as concrete; every contour of their rugged muscle is outlined in leather armour. Their swords of qarnun bone are menacingly sheathed paired with their kinetic-energy absorbing varidium shields. He sees at once how the atmosphere shifts as though their presence infringed upon the steady gravity of the area like the ripples a stone makes after it sinks into a pond.

As they are led through to the Throne Room Darius straightens his lapels and buttons his jacket, as though to better present an aura of civility before addressing his soldiers. “Be on your best behaviour, won’t you boys? We enter the lion’s den now,”

He almost forgets he is meant to pretend at being the well-tailored beast, not like the other coarse-mannered brutes of his kind. He has learned a certain practised gentility, to suture his marred pelt with silk and rose-velvet and make play that he is domesticated. Brought to heel. Brought under her heel at least. And what a fine one it was this morning, sheer lace and sharpened stiletto.

“Your Imperial Luminosity.” His breath is warm with spiced wine tinged copper, for all the words he’d swallowed bloody raw in lieu of the fresh meat he had abstained from hunting. He obediently crooks his knee, just so, before rising to receive her grace.

Empress Amira was fixtured above him on her Solar Throne, named for its carved likeness to their sun and its many outstretched tendrils which crowned upon her head a coronal of light. The throne itself was uplifted on a dais by an exhausting cascade of enamelled marble steps. At the foot of the steps sat two identical white lions, pallid as death, their pearlized wings folded inwards which they licked and nuzzled at diligently.

Upon the nearing of Darius’ presence their muscles twitch, their ears peel back, and they are stirred with an involuntary revulsion that had them sneering and gnashing their teeth as any natural-born beast could do when met with nature’s opposition. For the feeling one held towards an Occassi was rarely such a stomach-rending odium rather than a mundane sort of distaste. As though upon pleasurably gliding your hand over a smooth surface you had accidentally scuffed upon some irksome excrescence, a so-called imperfection, and upon finding it you are unable to resist the unfathomable urge to correct it, to pummel it back into order, as though by physical exertion alone you might align it with your conception of what is righteous. What is ordinary.

It took a snap of Amira’s fingers to silence them.

“Darius Rex,” a gracious greeting by the empress who today is garbed in brocade silks in decadent crimson which was tented by an embroidered half-skirt. It is said that encapsulated within her heavily jewelled bodice were the lost treasure troves of the Draconian Mountains and that she’d commandeered a small army of pixies install every gemstone with mathematical precision. “Nice of you to heed our invitation,”

Here, she gestures towards her attending magisterium of which he recognised a few of the faces. Lin Song the Head Scholar from Aikha whom he’d had many dealings with when he had served upon the court proper and Madhali Azar, Magister of Defence. Song is wearing her scholarly robes in heavy painted silk and suspended from her neck was a large astronomical watch with overlapping dials, one for the sun and moon with finely illustrated symbols for the monthly constellations in gold leaf and an hourly dial equally gilded and pigmented with midnight hues of blue to the pink-orange of dawn.

He recalls a much larger replica in the Celestial Court; a floating orb encased in a gilt-brass framework that mechanically rotated in accordance with the current position of the sky.

“But of course,” he says “and may I ask just under what circumstances am I to receive this honour?”

The magisters share a fleeting look amongst themselves. “Your brother, the lost prince,” the empress explains with a delicate crinkle of her nose “well it appears he has been found. Though unfortunately, he just about shredded through twenty of my knights before I was able to detain him,”

That sounded rather much like Dominus for certain, though many questions buzz through his mind about how such a thing could happen. “Were your knights not armed with amaranthum charms?” Occassi magic relied on proximity but he knows well that amaranthum was a rather potent inhibitor. It rendered them almost entirely useless save for their strength and speed.

“That is just the thing,” Lin Song asserts “they were, the very best, and yet from the looks of the bodies it appeared to have almost no effect. Your brother disfigured them, not just with his hands, their skeletons were charred beyond recognition.”

To withstand the effects of amaranthum was troublesome news indeed and yet, he could not quite disbelieve that his brother would experiment with tolerance building, it is exactly the sort of masochistic gambit their father would subject him to. Especially considering what happened to his mother.

“No doubt Dominus will be on alert now and on the move, I don’t expect for you to be able to find him as easily. And yet, I wouldn’t suggest you set a spy on him either. Not if he truly is immune to amaranthum as I’ve come to suspect.” He grazes his stubble with his fingers, an amalgam of envy and irritation burbling within his chest. Irritation for this will surely make holding him difficult and envy for not yet having thought of that idea first.

“That is exactly why I summoned you here,” Amira interjects, once more commanding the room. “I wish for you to craft a daemon to capture your brother, something tailor-made that will withstand whatever other nasty surprises he has in store for us,”

Darius has seen first-hand what had become of previous victims of amaranthum. To ingest even a chip would be enough to disintegrate the lining of one’s throat whilst engorging oneself would just about liquefy one’s entrails. To expose yourself to such agony in continuation as your organs split open and reknit themselves and your bloodstream seared in your arteries showed an almost indomitable resolve. “I will, of course, require ample time and resources to be able to craft a design befitting of such magnitude, you understand-”

Madhali Azar audibly snorts. “Yes, yes, we are well aware of how well he managed to get away the _first_ time. Consider this a chance at redemption.”

Amira further elaborates with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You will have access to the finest bio-engineers that the Empire has to offer, at your choosing, and in the meantime, Magister Azar will enlighten you on the recent findings of her search,”

Darius’ eyes flit over to the Magister of Defence with a vulpine cunning. To be alone with her is all he desired. “I will also require manufacturing to take place in Mortos,”

This requirement, he acknowledges, will be far more unfavourable for he knows that Amira does not trust him, what little regard that she holds him in, that he should be something immeasurably crass to her but a necessity nonetheless: Her tamed beast that kept all the others beasts from chipping away at the door with brusque, ungraceful talons.

“ _Supervised_ manufacturing,” Amira emphasises “and Magister Azar shall expect regular updates from you,”

“As you wish,”

“The daemon will, of course, be accompanied by our Lightshield troops, Your Luminosity,” chimes in Lord Commander Orion and Darius knew it to be a serious event when Lightshields were being deployed. But he could think of no better reason for stronger reinforcements than that of an Occassi of royal blood.

“Of course, but be certain not to kill him as I want his extrication and banishment to be a public event.” Amira’s eyes are hard, glittering amethysts as they turn to Darius. “It will surely set an example for those loyalists of yours, I'd imagine.”

Power extrication and public surveillance had already done very little to dissuade them from their cause, which they appear to dedicate to with a rapturous fervour. His father had become a martyr for the damned and downtrodden, Occassi supremacy in its most refined form. His deathless imprisonment only added to it. Darius not yet knew what could be used to replace him but ensuring his brother's demise, not banishment, would at least remove one pertinent threat to his rule.

“I shall do my best to retrieve him unharmed, Your Luminosity,”

“You may be dismissed,” Amira’s voice is a clear aristocratic lilt as she adjourned the meeting and stepped down from her throne.

Darius makes a seamless transition to the side of Magister Azar as she departs from the room. “I was hoping we might further discuss what information you have on my brother,”

The elderly Seraji fixes upon him with her coal black stare. “I have compiled a report for you of my last findings. Come to the Magisterium Suites after lunch and I shall have it ready.” And thus she dismisses him too with an elegant incline of her head to attend to whatever previous engagement she had lined up after this one.

 _Later then_ , he thinks. After all, he still has yet to thank her for planting a spy in his midst. 

* * *

He finds his way inside the private guest quarters which is always set up in mind for visitors of relative importance. He is thankful at least for that repetition for they often leave ample refreshments in the form of cordial and lavender muffins plus it provides him with an impeccable view of the wisteria-covered pavilion and the hushed conclaves that would often take place beneath it.

He really ought to have expected Laila would be there awaiting him in hindsight or more that it had been her orchestrations altogether that had led him to this room. They’d not spoken since she sent for him in Mortos and he allowed himself to delusion to think he might just be able to avoid her.

But sure enough there she is elegantly arranged on the sofa wearing some frail negligee of undoubtedly faerie-woven make, the folds of which were gaping open as she leans forward displaying her rather obvious nakedness. Nudity didn't have the same taboo in Vysteria of course, but he doesn't doubt she knows exactly what she was doing, especially to him.

He swallows and closes the door behind him, pathetically trying to expand the time he had before he was forced to speak with her. “Laila, what are you doing?”

She has one gilt curl woven around her finger which she releases as she kicks up her legs from the sofa to touch down on the floor and approach him. As she walks, her skin bounces sunlight to and from every contour and elevated peak of her skin causing a soft glisten of constellation fragments to bedew the shelf of her breasts to the concave in her collarbone. “Coming to see you, silly,” she teases in that innocuous manner as she takes the edges of his cloak between her fingers. “Thought you could do with a warm welcome after suffering the draconian demands of my mother,”

He can see the haphazardly tied belt of her robe beginning to unravel and forces himself to look away. As if the tension he’d suffered in her mother’s court was not enough without her stirring an even more potent form of frustration.

“Unless you want me to go?” she wonders aloud and begins to step beyond him to do just that.

He seizes her arm mid-step and yanks her towards him before curving his head over hers to seal their lips together.

Laila folds into the kiss, emitting a sound that is lazy and feline from the curved pillar of her throat. “Does this mean you’re over the little spat we had earlier? Suffice it to say I had already forgotten it.”

Her eyes meet his, twinkling in expectation.

Darius says nothing, allowing his hands to glide between the parting of the negligee to unveil her body and let the material disintegrate into a puddle on the floor. He notices that only the frilly scrap of her undergarments remain and hooks his thumbs into it to roll them down her thighs and past her ankles.

She could be a sculptured figurine in the Decadere. She’d slot right in amongst those cherished pieces of historical tribute with that whittled sliver of a waist, the inviting arc of her finely toned thighs and all that honey-brown unblemished skin. Every inch of her was flawless, the craft of a superior hand. He wonders whether any deity of hers had realised what they’d fashioned.

He kisses her again as his hands come to cup her breasts, pert and enticingly rounded as he eclipses them. Her pliant flesh fills his palms like it is crafted for him as his thumbs trace her rosy nipples to stiffness.

She leans in to further press her warm body against him as her lean leg curves around his own.

Darius emits a low, strangled noise, one of either desire or defeat. Then he lifts her into his arms.

“Is that a yes?” she questions in a way that suggests she already possesses the answer.

“Oh god yes,” he says, carrying her over to the settee to press her down against it. He pulls her into his lap to join their bodies together, his mouth at her breasts, his hand nudging between her thighs as he flicks his tongue against her nipple and suckles at the supple flesh while his thumb glides with expert precision, massaging in attentive swirls.

He feels her back arch into him as she chokes down her moans to keep from making too much noise. She presses her breasts further against his face as he slides his fingers inside her and feels the fluttering tension in her muscles around him.

“If this is how we’re solving our arguments-” her sentence splits off with a moan as she rolls her hips against his hand with an urgency. “I’ll have to make you angry at me more often,”

It is said with coquettish mirth but he can’t miss the uncertainty in her voice as she speaks. He pries his mouth from her breast to meet her gaze.

“I was never angry,” he admits, his fingers still carrying on their slow, deliberate pump alongside the painterly stroke of his thumb. “I’m just… trying to understand your motivations,”

He feels the skitter of her nails against the nape of his neck as they clutch at the fine hairs with trembling fingers. He wanted to dismantle her defences, chip away at all that finely lacquered polish to someplace still raw and sensitive and exposed that she has not yet learned to fold away behind prim-laced pleasantries.

What would he see in her then?

He watches her with her neck inclined, her plump lips parted as inhibition withered away to a carnal need as her body tenses and shudders with completion before she collapses against him, her forehead nestling against his. He kisses the ski-sloped tip of her nose as he waits for her to recover her breaths.

“Wanting Dominus not to face banishment has got nothing to do with my personal feelings for him, Darius,” she tells him as her nose nuzzles against his gently. “Is that answer enough for you?”

He slides a few tousled curls away from her face and slides his thumb down one strand. “I suppose so,”

“Good,” she sighs and slides her arms around his neck. “Your brother… I think he needs help, not harm, isn’t there any part of you that could look past this conflict-”

“It’s too late for that,” Darius tells her.

She inhales so thickly as her arms recede from around his neck to rest upon his shoulders, a clouded softness appearing in her bright blue eyes. “You don’t miss him, at all? You haven’t ever for a moment wished that this situation could be altered?”

He doesn’t know why that hardens his throat so much as he loosens the noose of his tie that suddenly became palpably tight.

How to explain the relief that came of finally removing the boot of his father’s oppression from his neck even if it came at his brother’s expense? Or perhaps, even because of it? To say that he did not lament, that he did not sometimes wane from his feeling of righteous victory at having finally surpassed second place loss would be a falsity. But an Occassi was nothing without his successes having come from leaving the print of his boot upon another’s neck and the warm stain of their blood on his maw. This is just their way.

“I don’t see the use in regretting, princess,” he says, tracing with reverence the curve of her cheek like he was discovering it for the first time as his finger cups her chin. “And there are some things I would never alter,”

She enchants the layers of his clothes away and wraps her arms around him so that their chests were compressing and he can feel the warm cushion of her breasts flattening against his skin. As she kisses him he feels a sudden shock ripple through him that he realises can only originate from her power. He shudders against her as another vibration expands through him like a pulse, igniting every nerve end, causing a twinge in his muscles that was oddly pleasurable.

“Laila,” he groans against her lips, as her hips grind lustfully against his groin.

“Not done welcoming you yet,” she whispers in response.

He isn’t done being welcomed by any means and it’s not until he has her wound so tightly against him that he remembers how much he’s longed for the shape of her.

“Then, by all means, have your way,” he murmurs as she shoves him eagerly onto the cushions, her breasts hovering teasingly within his reach as she mounts him and lays her palms flat against his muscled torso. He feels the warmth radiate from the inside of her thigh as she aligns their bodies and sinks down on him.

He shudders beneath her in relief as her hips buck forward to grind herself against the smooth, flat surface area of his abdomen while inching him further in. He closes his eyes as he becomes immersed in her, overwhelmed by the little noises of exertion she makes as he scrapes his blunt fingernails up the ravine of her spine. Her movements were like a calm tide in midsummer, seaside weather, every wave of his pleasure coaxed gently by an attentive roll of the hips.

She brushes his cheek with her palm to bring him into focus then tilts his chin up to meet her abysmally blue irises. Blue as cornflowers they were with a subtle hue of violet and thin flakes of gold around her pupil. “Watch me,” she says through lips pink as a fruit rind full of nectar. He often wonders if they might burst with juice if kissed her, sunk his teeth into her. “Watch me fuck you,”

Her words send a sudden rush of bloodstream pulsing through his groin. He could feel his fangs threatening to push through his gums but manages to suppress it, along with any other monstrous inclinations he might have. He’d gotten good at it now, with her.

He kisses the underside of her jaw, nibbling his way to the corner just beneath her ear before she anchors him down with her hips and rocks gently at a pace that feels almost designed to torment him. His sigh graduates into a vulnerable moan, low in his throat, which she muffles with her lips against his. There was something immensely tender in the way her mouth pried open his so their tongues could meet in a tentative touch.

To think he almost missed the opportunity to be doing this with her right now, having her ride him into oblivion with the gentle graze of her stiff nipples against his chest. All because of his own latent insecurity, the spider-webbed skeletons he still had yet to clear. Because once when he had been young and defenceless, the one who ought to have brought him to comfort at her breast had instead chosen to shove him away.

He wouldn’t think of this now though. Not with her in his arms again. His fingers curl more possessively against the backs of her thighs and his hips buck to meet hers. He knows it wouldn’t be long for him now. His release was already coiling tight in his belly, signalling him to the point of no return.

He comes so hard that the edges of his vision begin to fuzz and he can only feel Laila shuddering against him as her face alights in the intimate gloom of the room that coddles their bodies. He lets his body slacken beneath her as her own writhes against him to satiation.

Darius sighs as he sinks contentedly back into the mattress. “I needed that,” he declares, his body slick and sweat-sheened with a soreness in his muscles that was not entirely unpleasant. The continuous pulsation of electricity was still vibrating through his body by her design, causing an audible buzz beneath his skin. He’s always found it soothing, though he does not doubt that it was more for her sake overall. Still, it was a treat enough for him just to watch her pleasure herself against him, knowing that he was the source, watching her face ascend into unreality through her ecstasy.

She is slumped against him now, her body molten on top of his as her skin emanates that warm roseate afterglow he’s always favoured. “You seemed like you did,” she says, her features playful and elfin as she leans up to kiss him and then place several more against the sharp cut of his jawline. “Tell me what’s on your mind,”

He expected for it to come to this now she has him on his back, spent and satisfied and entirely pliable to her questioning. His eyes seek her face and finds it earnest and sweetly heart-shaped and part of him just wants to believe she means to show concern for him in the way a lover usually would for someone she cares for rather than a politician for their cause. Had she been an Occasselle then politics would likely be the furthest thing from her mind, yet the Solarites were ruled by it.

“I held a meeting with the Magisterium,” he says, trying to ignore how distractingly soft her lips were on his skin “they want me to craft another daemon to catch Dominus,”

That stills her as he expected it to. Apprehension corrupts the usual luminescent glow of her gaze, stark even in the dimmed lighting. Her paradoxical awe and revulsion of his engineered monstrosities was well-known.

“You mean like one of those bloodhounds?” She takes her lip between her teeth, still swollen and stung from kissing. “We do not hold a sample of Dominus’ blood, how will it locate him?”

“It’ll work,”

Laila looks sceptical. “How can you be sure?”

“I made it, so it will work,”

He can tell she is not convinced by the gentle crinkle that appears in her brow like ruched silk. He wants to smooth his thumb over it. “You sound very certain,”

He puts his thumb to her temple and traces the newly creased fold on her forehead. “You know when I first decided I would switch sides to your mother?” he asks her, his fingers now tangling into her sunlit tresses “it was after Vasilia had died and father truly went off the deep end. I tried to appeal to him by ensuring I could win him this war by crafting inventions that could thwart many of your defences and render your ethereal powers irrelevant. He told me he had no time for mortal sleight of hand, that he intended to earn his throne in bone and sorcery and nothing less. Mortesians are above all stubbornly resistant to change, so I told him that he could die by his tradition and subsequently informed your mother of the various fail-safes in our magic use. People have often underestimated me and they have often been wrong, I _will_ catch Dominus.”

He flips her onto her back and positions himself between her legs. “Now I’d appreciate it if you’d stop asking me about politics when we’re together.” He extends one claw and lightly grazes it down her abdomen. “I don’t have long before I have to meet with Madhali Azar and after that, I don’t know when I’ll ever see you again,”

Her back arches like a crescent to his touch as he circles her navel and curves his claw against her pert nipple. “So when else am I supposed to ask you exactly?”

He smothers her impertinent smirk with his lips, causing a brisk end to all discussion. 

* * *

His brief interlude with Laila served to elevate his mood to much higher spirits and there is even a little pep in his step as he approaches the Magisterium Suites to meet Madhali. The Suites were located within the Summer Palace, about a moat-bridge away from Crystal Palace, nestled within a ring of lithe blonde wood trunks that were poised like ballerinas. It served as the main quarters for the magisters and active sessions of Parliament when they weren’t being called to attend court at the Empress’ whim.

The palace facade filters light like a prism, casting off a hazy kaleidoscope of soft-toned hues in teal and pink and white as Darius enters through to the marble lobby and its flowing veins of gilt.

He signs his name into the visitors’ guest-book and procures a medallion from the counter as a young mundane escorts him through the entrance into the Suites and towards the door with Madhali’s gold-etched plaque.

Befitting of her Seraji heritage she had a font placed at the door filled with water which many travelling desert-dwellers would use to rinse their brows and quench their palates when making visits to friends and family. Most held one regardless of wealth but its finery was undoubtedly influenced by the rung you were on the social ladder. Madhali’s was pure bronze with a spout shaped in the form of a lion’s mouth.

Darius dips his fingers into the purified water and uses it to splash his face if only for the etiquette of doing so before following the mundane into the magister’s quarters.

“Lady Azar,” the young girl bleats as she steps aside to reveal him. “I have His Highness Darius Rex here to see you,”

“Thank you, Jessamine.” Madhali dismisses with her with a wave of a hand and slowly slides her glasses down the bridge of her broad nose. “Welcome, Darius Rex, if you’d please make yourself comfortable,”

He does so by occupying the vacant cracked leather seat across from her clawfoot desk. The magister’s quarters show immense swaggering opulence with its composition of deep wine red and dark polished walls shaped with moulding. Dramatically swooping curtains in heavy brocade silk were tied back by a rope with gold tassels. Velvet-lined bookcases queue up against each of the walls filled to the brim with leather-encased tomes and a light sugar-coating of dust.

“I trust you had a pleasant lunch, Magister,” Darius comments for he could still decipher the perfumed remnants of the curried mutton and jewelled rice she’d consumed just an hour before.

“Very much so,” she confirms and slides a hefty file over to his side of the desk. “Here is all the information I’ve been able to compile on your brother. I’d warn you that the images present can be quite distressing but I’m certain you are not unfamiliar to carnage,”

Darius snatches it eagerly and rifles with carnal hunger through the texts and photographs as it unravels details of the gore and bloodshed that had come to pass. “Is this all of it?”

“We know from you that he had been occupying the Landour rainforest, one of our densest environments on the continent, he easily could’ve been concealing himself in there for years. Decades.”

“And what do the locals know of it?”

“As far as they are concerned, it is the unruly wildlife that is responsible for what happened. It is not unusual for our knights to take contracts to rid the forests of any nature of beasts to ensure that they do not disturb the nearby villages and it is a preferable story to peddle than that of a rogue Occassi,”

“As I’m sure,” Darius says, scanning the texts with mechanical efficiency. “Have you managed to locate his potential dwellings?”

“Not as of yet,” Madhali admits “I have my best soldiers on the task of course though they are rather on edge, but it would certainly be a find, knowing how he’d lived all those years, supported himself, it could tell us a number of things about his mindset, what he intends to do,”

He gives a just barely concealed chuckle. “You don’t need to see his bed-sit in order to understand the inner workings of Dominus, Magister, he has a rather simplistic, goal-based mind. He will be intent on vengeance and I don’t doubt that your knights will be but the first of the bodies to fall.”

The fear of the Magister is a subtle thing, a brief skittering of the eyes towards the photographs that adorned her desk, but Darius was primed to narrow in on frailty, to seek it the way the arrow of a compass does true north. His eyes then follow her trajectory towards the framed images of her relatives, the two older ones first, broad and proud and strong and then the younger, stunted youth still rounded in the cheeks.

“Are these your children?” Darius inquires as he casually handles one of the photographs on the desk, bringing it closer into view.

A brief glimmer of discomfort appears in Madhali’s dark eyes as she hastens to take the photograph from him. “Yes, the two older ones are my Anissa and Jalal, you’d probably have seen the latter’s name in the records I have shown you, he is the commanding officer in the Thalit region of the country.” The warmth of her maternal pride simmers genially in her voice.

“And your other son?”

She looks so startled then and he can practically feel that tiny burst of suppressed emotion slithering down his spine, a sharp fizzle of effervescence like the opening of sparkling nectar. “Malik-” she begins and then a falter “he died in the war,”

“A terrible loss that, I can’t imagine how it must feel,” Darius says, and he plucks at the memory as he would an aged spirit, distilled to refinement in the cellar of her subconscious.

“Ah, well it was a long time ago,” says she, but there’s something a little too fanciful in the way that she embellishes it with that soft breath of laughter. And that’s when he sensed it prickling right through his gums, that bittersweet tang of guilt.

That one taste is all he needs.

“And yet still, from the look of him barely was he a boy above twenty summers, it must’ve seemed like such a senseless, inconceivable loss,”

“All death is senseless and inconceivable, though the war perhaps more so I shall grant you that.” And slowly the bouquet intensifies, as notes of invigorating spice invite themselves in among the already impeccable arrangement. “In truth I… I blame myself, he was too young to fight, too foolish to understand the gravity of the burden he was undertaking,”

“And you still feel guilty,” he deduces, practically salivating as he peels each clustered layer of emotion with surgical precision and engulfs them entirely. Then he yanks at the proverbial cork he already loosened in her mind to quench ever more his sudden voracity. Easy now, best not to overdo it. He takes care not to drench himself in the forceful surge of her emotional outbreak as it moistens his fiendish veins and inflates them full to bursting. She was gushing inside him like a current in the dehydrated fjords of an empty canyon. The sheer fullness of it like a hyperactive burst of energy inside his secondary circulation.

A tear drips down Madhali’s cheek and adds some salt to the palate. “Y-yes,”

“And angry,” he adds and swishes the essence around his sensory taste buds. Their flavours were always so distinct, so delectably vibrant in their lucidity. It greases his long-neglected mystical senses like a stick of butter on the grill. “Perhaps a little resentment in that bouquet as well, towards me I assume or… no, towards Amira?”

He sees how she fought against it, strained to put a stopper to the spewing wound of her maternal grief. But she was paralysed. “She was the one who convinced me to send Malik, she convinced all of us, said that we needed the extra bodies. Bodies. As if we were discussing the slaughter of mere cattle.” And suddenly he felt an inflammation in his chest as her eyes grew wild and unsteady. “Why am I telling you this? I do not understand,”

Darius leans in to halt the trajectory of the next tear as it falls and swipes the residue against her cheek. “Would you like me to take the pain away, Madhali?” He traces the creased ridges of her cheek, feeling suddenly tender towards her and her dolorous grief as she nods towards him, fully enthralled by his influence. “Alright.” His tongue strokes over the syllables like he would a cat, a tender croon of concession from the monster, deceptive as the touch he uses to tuck her hair behind her ear and tilt up her chin. “Let us begin with ensuring you instruct Reisa Jahuar to do exactly what I tell her to,”


	10. Reverie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word of warning: From this point onwards is where the NaNo-quality work kicks in so readability may vary.
> 
> Next up we're back with Disney Princess Ellena and her little shop of wonders.

There are hidden enclaves within the castle that only she knows. Tucked away behind an ever-shifting mirage of doors and hallways were several pocket universes, custom-built by powerful illusory magic that adjusted accordingly to the castle residents each time it changed hands. These tiny pockets of reverie were the aesthetic replicas of the soul’s innermost form of serenity and often took the shape of idyllic landscapes that continued to be the muse of poems and songs and paintings.

As a result of her evanescent nature, Laila’s own little pocket often evolved to suit whatever fleeting emotional whim that happened to seize her in its grip. Sometimes she needed villa walls with virescent frescoes that flaked with gilt and the harrowed echo of gold-veined marble beneath her steps. Other times it was concealed enclosures of crystalline lagoons that were so transparent as to look a mirror.

As of now, her body floats like a sylph among fervently pink water-lilies and their accompanying pads. Straying petals orbit and cling to the lithe expanse of her torso and willow limbs until the nape of her neck bobs against the water’s edge, calling to attention the plaited tendrils of weeping willow leaves that marked the end of her journey.

She vaults herself out of the pond as fragmented glints of sunlight enhance her pale brown body, causing her skin to glisten like she was something just as golden and sand-dusted as the sea-soaked shoreline, just as deoxygenating. Many have exhausted themselves of their breaths just by hiking their gaze up her sinuous miles.

She milks her damp golden ringlets for moisture and then parts the curtains of the weeping willow to reveal Aurora surrounded by a picnic built up for two and pouring susurrating glasses of sparkling pink nectar into gold-rimmed crystal flutes.

“About time you got here,” her dearest friend scolds as she hands her a glass of pink nectar, it was swimming with raspberries.

Laila takes a sip and finds it tart and sweet before evoking an invocation to weave her body in silk charmeuse. “Sorry dear, I had a previous engagement,”

Aurora expels a knowing sound. “From that smile on your face, I’d hazard a guess you just got back from seeing Darius,”

Laila descends to her knees and then to her stomach, struggling to obscure the emanation of her rosy gaiety from still feeling the impression of his hands ensnaring her wrists and the obscenities he’d whispered in her ear not long before. “I needed to ask him what my mother called upon him for, I want to know what she’s up to,” and her hand reaches absently and greedily towards the enticing arrangement of pastries, the violet-garnished eclairs and rose macarons wedged with ripe fat cherries and the sugar-dusted lavender madeleines that were all to her liking.

“You know there was a way to ask him that didn’t necessarily involve laying with him,” Aurora tells her with an immaculately arched brow as she tears through the soft, golden sponge of a madeleine.

“Mm, I wanted to lay with him though,” Laila says, making her selection of a macaron. “Or on him at least,”

“You are rotten,”

Laila winks and sputters with a melodious laugh as she twists onto one side. Only a select few ever made it within the confines of her illusory room. Leander was one, Aurora the other. Both just as intrinsic to her as one’s left and right hand.

“So, what is it that he told you?”

Laila screws off the top layer of the macaron and laps at the cream-filled centre. “My mother wants him to craft a daemon to capture Dominus,”

The colour in the face of Aurora wanes to a more pallid bronze. “I can’t imagine why she’d give him carte blanche to do that, ghastly things, and surely there should be another, safer way to detain him,”

“My mother is being cautious and for good reason, I suppose. She wants him to be tracked and brought into custody, preferably without alerting Mortos to his continued survival. But I can’t help think, Aurora, that continuing to keep the Occassi at arm’s length and treat them as common beasts is the wrong approach, perhaps we ought to try and embrace them as our own and invest them in the empire.” She pops the cherry on the edge of her teeth and spits out the pit. “Did you know that there are loyalists sprouting up in favour of Erebus? In spite of it being his actions that caused the war?”

“That doesn’t surprise me, Mortos was never willing to gracefully accept defeat if you recall. Remember they only agreed to a union when they realised it would ease many of the debts they suffered after paying reparations.”

Laila nods in remembrance. “My mother was plenty unforgiving in the aftermath, prompted by _yours_ mind-” House Golde was the lineage from which Aurora hailed and they had been Magisters of Currency for centuries which made Aurora’s utter disdain for economics all the more ironic “-but according to her they needed to be crippled, she just chose to do it economically.”

Aurora exhales gently and throws back the last of her nectar. “I want the violence to stop as much as you do, Laila, the Occassi repulse me I can’t deny it, _Dominus_ frightens me, don’t think I forget what happened just before the war when you ended the betrothal-”

Her chest flattens, throat ballooning. “I told you  _never_ to mention that,” it is a shrill, piercing plea exhaled at the edge of a shallow breath. She feels at once as though she was suspended in an airless vacuum and each inhale is like a striking of a match against the inner lining of her arteries. Once it surpassed, she wets her lips in shame. “I’m sorry-”

“No, you’re right, I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Aurora soothes and pours her out another drink “your glass was running dry,”

She swallows without thought, her fingers still trembling feebly around the stem. The warmth blooms gently in her chest before she asks. “Do you have any fever left?”

Aurora gives a brisk nod she pulls Laila’s head upon her breast and produces from the air two white pills which she sets lightly on each tongue. The effect takes hold immediately as it dissolves and Laila allows her body to give over to the sudden inflammation of volcanic heat that rinses over her joined by the bleary, near-alcoholic buzz of lassitude sanding her senses smooth.

Though their immortal bodies would never know true sickness, many were partial to the symptoms predicating the beginning onset of a fever; of the sensation of languishing muscles giving way to soft tremors and the skittering tingles of numbness, like a swarm of spindly insects just beneath the skin. A secretion of sweat prickles upon her smooth brow as Laila snuggles even more intimately into Aurora’s cushioned bosom.

She lets Aurora hold her until the fever breaks.

* * *

The fever is still singing in her veins when she left the illusory room rosing the highest peaks of her skin with a carmine flush. Her reflection taunts her mercilessly within the silver disc of a mirror as she attempts to conceal the evidence of the incriminating hue with light, feathery strokes of translucent mineral veil. _You look unseemly_ , she can already hear in her mother’s sharply honed vocals.

It won’t be long before she’ll be called to meet her in time for the allotted time slot she had managed to ferret out from her over-cramped schedule. For in her fifty summers on earth she’s learned acutely how her mother guarded her time as well as her jewellery and in turn forged a burglar out of her daughter who attempted to thieve it whenever she could.

Her perfume beckons on the hand-painted floral countertop, a translucent blush-tinged liquid in a reeded glass vial embellished with a pink silk bow. She sprays lavish puffs to her wrists, the pulse beneath her ear and her accentuated collarbone before returning the vial to its rightful place. Then her lips she stains with a muted gloss that was red as summer berries.

Her hair comes next, which she decides to leave loose and lascivious, effervescent as the froth of sparkling nectar. Thick, luxuriant and tightly compacted locks that gave a buoyant bounce each time she stepped. She massages them with argan oil and runs through it with a comb. She’d heard it said that her mother once held the same wild curls in her youth, but those free-flowing tresses have long been subdued between the plates of titanium flat irons until they yield into obediently pressed layers of gossamer white.

She changes her outfit three times before re-settling upon the ruffle-edged frock in ivory charmeuse which blanches against her beige skin. She fiddles absently with a button as her stomach begins to roil with that familiar carbonated fizzle and flares of heat radiate in her chest.

“It’ll be fine,” she says and forces her best smile.

Her mother awaits her in her personal salon with its unspoilt colour scheme of coffee and milk. Laila recalls with undiluted awe the sepia-toned murals and the carvings of brass that her fingers always twitched to trace but never did so. She had been but fifteen summers old when she had been first allowed into this room. She remembers the knock-kneed fear and her mother’s exacting standards of how to sit, stand and conduct herself to her liking.

Such things are muscle memory to her now so it takes but a mere raise of her mother’s brow for Laila to know where and how to sit and not to touch the biscuits or the tea without taking a tray first. “Thank you for having me, Maman,”

“Of course, dear.” Her mother’s lips inflate into a smile. “Now out with it, let’s not dawdle,”

She captures the thick rind of her lip between her teeth in uncertainty. “When I went to Mortos I was surprised to discover that there are loyalists cropping up in favour of Erebus,” she says, her fingers lacing around the hem of her dress. “I was just wondering why you never thought that pertinent to tell me?”

“Laila,” sighs her mother “as Crown Princess your duties are clear and they always have been. Your realm lies in party-planning and philanthropy, in cultivating an attractive and suitable candidacy in the eyes of the electoral college for when my reign is done. The political always has and always will fall to me. And I suppose I didn’t want to overwhelm you, you know how you are-”

She flushes in affront as her already fluttering pulse thrashes even harder against the birdcage of her ribs. “You forget, Maman, that I was almost princess consort of Mortos. Perhaps I’m not any more, but that doesn’t mean that the country is any less-” she gropes the air for the appropriate term “important to me, that I do not have investments-”

“And those investments, dear, is precisely why I left you out of it,” her mother points out, her lilaceous eyes pale and reflective “needless to say I don’t need your status as an Occassi sympathiser reflecting poorly on you when the throne is once more up for election, nor on me at current, the situation with Mortos at the moment is rather dire but I leave it solely in the hands of Darius. He seems capable enough, and he knows he’d better not disappoint me,”

She swallows thickly. “You can’t expect to ostracise Mortos and snub its nobility and then hope for them not to want to turn to the loyalists, Maman,” she hastens to add on lest the sternness of her mother’s gaze cause her to lose her nerve. “I recognise we’ve talked about this before and you wouldn’t listen to me then, but there is violence and anger and resentment all around and I think perhaps if we could just extend to them something of an olive branch, let them see we are willing to accept them fully-”

“And what do you propose exactly? You said it yourself, the only language these creatures understand is that of violence. And fear and intimidation and cruelty, I am merely translating to suit their needs. You think I haven’t tried mercy? You think I haven’t attempted to send out diplomats for that very purpose? Celine Daystar was there for five months before she concluded that the ministers there were incorrigible and refused to afford her the dignity and respect that she deserved-”

“Then let me go, please, the nobility already knows me as the once betrothed of their lost prince. I promise you if you let me represent Soleterea in your stead that I can turn them around to me.”

Her mother makes a scathing sound.

“And what better way to appeal to Parliament than to be known as the one that flipped the Mortesian court on side?” The last she says with a defiant glitter in her eyes as the full extent of her calculation becomes clear.

“Oh, _dear_ ,” her mother makes a dove-soft coo as she leans in to frame the shape of her cheek. “You think I would ever let you go into that daemonic underworld again after what happened the last time? How quickly you forget all the jeering and the mockery you endured on the part of Erebus Rex. To be frank, I rather think they’d sooner bite off your hand than let it feed them,”

Anger soon gives way to a throbbing heat behind her ribs that she is quick to suppress, she knows that if she begins to lose her temper even in response to her mother’s diminishing words, she’d only be further proving her right. “I _can_ do this,” she asserts, unwilling to bend “let me prove it to you,”

Her mother tilts her head in contemplation. “I can see that you are intent on this and far be it from me to keep trying to argue with you when you set your mind on something, Laila. So I will let you have until next spring, if no progress is made you will be withdrawn. No arguments. Understood?”

As a girl she had never wanted much for stories, held no fondness for tall tales of charmed girls and the charmed lives they lead. Why resign oneself to just listening to such torrid tales of life and love, she’d thought, when you could be out there _living_ them? Thus the only tale she’d sought to weave was her own and in this story, the prince might be more bestial than beauty but he still dropped to his knees to kiss between her thighs just as tenderly. In this story, the princess might forego her steed to mount her prince instead. In this story, the beast is no longer something to be feared than to be tamed, claimed and partnered alongside.

And so she says: “Yes, yes I understand,”

* * *

The clink of metal greeting sings its melodious chime through the air as Laila and Leander circle one another in fluid, balletic movements.

Their bodies synchronise in perfect precision having surrendered themselves over to some form of divine possession wherein their limbs move in continuous ethereal grace as they struck, parried and counter-parried, their swords kissing in a brief flirtation.

Leander further pursues in his forward onslaught with a muted whoosh slicing through the air as he attempts an overhead slash to her shoulder which she is quick to deflect with the fat edge of her blade.

“You agreed to what?” he implores her to repeat as her counter sends him staggering backwards which coaxes a wing-tipped smile to her lips.

Sprite-dancing was a rare art form that certainly shared more in common with that of dancing than it did with fighting. It required a deep form of subliminal concentration and a fluency in the language of one’s physique where you make a quick study of your opponent’s next movements in an ephemeral flex of a muscle or quick jerk of a limb. From then it was a careful series of calculations, factoring speed, velocity and skill whilst subtracting the infirmities of an unsteady hand and clumsy footwork.

The result was something far more exquisite than brutal, a rapid collision of bodies that appeared to have thrown off the binds of gravity and its stubborn, nagging tugs.

“You heard very well what I said,” she chimes in her songbird lilt, her voice climbing another octave as she stops to taunt. “Your focus has gotten sloppy recently, Leander, appears I may have to go browsing for your replacement,”

He makes a quick jab for her forearm. “My focus is sound as a bell it’s your clarity I am uncertain of,”

She retreats with a small parry and ripostes. “Mortos is in dire need of diplomacy, my mother said it herself, Celine Daystar couldn’t stomach it in the end and you know what relentless dragons they are. So why not me?”

A counter-riposte as Leander steps in and make another lunge for her shoulder. “If I recall correctly-” he pants “the nobles there were no fonder of you even when you were chosen as Dominus’ bride,”

By now they had built up to a cadenced tempo, advance, advance, retreat, teasing towards him and lunging back before he could land a blow of his own.

She watches the muscle in his shoulders ripple as a telltale sign that he was about to lunge forward and pauses briefly to consider that in another context. “That is because the Mortesians lack a sense of fashion and humour and a woeful number of other things such as knowing how to properly spice their food.”

Leander makes a quick sweep for her leg as she drops her sword to counter the attack and the metal clinks like a friendly toast.

She retaliates with a riposte to his middle. “Strike,”

“Very good,” he croons appreciatively.

“Besides I could hardly work my charms when Erebus was intent to turn the court against me, always belittling me and sniping at me it was no wonder they lacked respect. Darius is different.” She coils tight into a serpentine stance as a gilt curl or two spring free from its unruly bun. Her ample bosom rises to the point of near spilling over the top of her corset before it recedes as she makes a strong advance towards him, falling back almost immediately in retreat.

Leander relentlessly pursues her to bridge the gap. His delicate, elfin features are gently creased in focus and his eyes are frigid and unflinching. For a brief moment she sees in him the methodical slayer of beasts, exalted in myth, Leander Lionheart, and she wondered if this is the look one might receive before the killing blow.

The thought simmers in her chest like a furnace as she sweeps her blade in a counter-attack before Leander disengages and makes a lunge towards her.

She is unprepared for that as her sword is knocked free of her grip, the latter of it falling in the distance ringing wall to wall.

And Leander is advancing towards her, slowly and methodically, his sword outstretched in silent victory. “I wouldn’t stake my life on that, ma damzel,”

She does not bend before him as her swan’s neck arches up to meet his gaze like she was granting him existence for the very first time. “That is why you are coming with me,”

He sheathed his sword and descends upon bended knee before her. “My services are yours to wield as always,”

She crooks her finger beneath his chin and raises him up to his feet. “When the assignment is confirmed I shall call upon you and not a moment before,” she hooks her leg around his calves and uses it to destabilise him until he falls.

“That is cheating!” he cries out among the airy, enigmatic vapour of her laughter as it echoes a beguiling trill even after she leaves the room.


	11. Herbaceous

The earth is moist and black as molasses as Ellena dips her hands inside to lace seeds into the planter before kneading it between her fingers like dough. Her fingernails come away encrusted with collections of soil before she reaches for the watering can, a portly floral-painted thing, and feeds the earth with the most potent elixir, the life-giving fluids of water and moonblood, before cupping with her hands the buried seeds so that she might coax forth a healthy budding sprout. It grows so green as the first shoots yawn from the subterranean slumber provided by its earthly womb before she trims for herself a hefty portion and seals it inside a translucent sachet to return to her clinic and have it ground into easily digestible powder.

The backdoor to her herb garden groans with rheumatic anguish before slapping shut with a whack as she stands among her aerated clinic and its rows upon rows of coloured diamond glass and their labels that sprawl across the circumference in scribbled cursive. Pills and potions and powders were all ingeniously blended by hand under the exclusive tutoring of the most adept witch doctors and eccentric of herbalists.

Their words and guidance aid her even now, compacted inside the calfskin tomes that queue neatly inside her ebony cabinet. These texts that were once sacrosanct to her had soon become adorned with her diligent scrawls and absent-minded doodles, revisions to ancient recipes that she had improved upon during experimentation, and pressed with sprigs of herb and blossom she had collected during her travels.

To be a healer, she had soon learned, did not come with the rigid confines found within other sciences where this happened and then that happened and this was why, but instead was a continuous dialogue fostered between that of herself and the earth as it found newer ways to strengthen and award her knowledge and practical form of inquisition for as long as she respected its autonomy.

Thus, a certain synchronicity was fostered between that of her and nature most often made clear by the way its common benefactors came to converge upon her as though she were at once something ancient and familiar and essential as the trees, as though she herself had sprouted up from the soil. She opens up her store to the silvered lilt of fleuriebirds as one flitted in from the open doorway and came to nestle upon the svelte knob of her shoulder.

As she sold her patron a herb to aid his angina, it was soon joined by a neighbour who rested upon her opposite. By the time she had finished recommending a new dietary regime to a sufferer of anxiety her shoulders were entirely crowded and they soon made their beds upon the dense curls of her hair. Soon they were diluting the air with their limpid birdsong and the dainty ruffle of feathers until the sound of the door tinkling once again sends them dispersing in a deluge of fragrant petal-feathers.

She has her back turned to this unexpected visitors and was carefully crossing out the appointments she had completed in straight, steady lines before her hand reaches a name that she was not familiar with. In a community as insular as Landour it was uncommon to come across names she did not already have an intimate medical history of but not impossible. So she gives it no less than a fleeting thought as the frail magi hobbles his way towards the counter in the peripheral of her vision.

“So, what can I do for you to-” a sudden yelp punctuates her question as in the place of the feeble-bodied patient she had been expecting is the Occassi she had abandoned in the rainforest. He is all rigid and right-angled, not a single softened curve to him, though the square cut of his jawline is buried beneath a dense mass of beard. His hair is similarly luxuriant and hangs limply against his shoulders where it is not tied away into a haphazard bun.

He presses a gloved finger to his puckered lips to silence her. “Stay calm,” he demands of her “it’s just a glamour,” and thus he demonstrates as his face and body once more ripples into the unassuming physique of a sickly patient and then back into his imposing figure.

Ellena refuses to be soothed however and seeks comfort in the lengthy space between them on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

“I have need of your services,” the Occassi insists though his voice does not once break from its mechanical monotone. “Common knowledge has it that you are the daughter of Sadik Nagin, I must speak with him, urgently, I need for you set me up an appointment,”

“No,” she says, offended by the insinuation that she had any form of intermediary privileges between the common magi and the slimy underbelly her father wallowed in. The clinic is meant to be her sanctuary, her last bastion of defence against the world that knew her only as the crime lord’s daughter. Now it had been breached, ruined.

The Occassi’s brow folds like an accordion. “Come again?”

His disbelief was evident and one she can’t help but expect was borne of inherent entitlement. This is not a creature who knew rejection often. The way he assumed militaristic command of the room, like it was a territory unattested for and all that was inside were merely awaiting his unlawful possession.

“I haven’t spoken to my father in ten years,” she tells him. “Now please leave my clinic,”

An angry flex protrudes from the Occassi’s rectangular jawline as he takes a presumptuous step forward and says, “I’m afraid that I must insist.”

As he does so she remembers his large hands and stout fingers and the vascular arms that came attached to them. Powerful muscle that swelled to a ripe summer fruit, round as mangoes. He could split her open like a watermelon, she realises with startling acuteness. He could scoop out her innards like the ripe vermilion of a pomegranate.

With enough focus she could carve a mouth into the floor, allow the earth to swallow him. Her fingers twitch with the static charge of ether. “And I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she says, and her voice, the soft, dove-feather down of it, so unsuited it was for belligerence and yet she steels herself against the unsteady tremor that threatens to force its way through. “Did you kill all of those soldiers?”

The Occassi calcifies to stone as though her words held an enchanting effect. Each infinitesimal tilt of his head felt like the tipping of a boulder. “They meant to entrap me, I am simply better at what I do,”

She hadn’t expected him to be so forthright. “I do not know what you desire my father for and I do not want to know. But I can’t help you,”

Something shifts within his marmoreal facade, so quick, a lightning flicker, something almost like the blackening of sclera. “Very well,” he relents “seems I will have to find some alternative method of obtaining what I seek,” and he pivots a full turn towards the door in determination.

“What does that mean?” Ellena calls after him but the Occassi does not stir towards her as he vanishes through the door. Her stomach fizzles in worry as instinctively her hand reaches towards her compact phone upon the desk before it stops just short of a few millimeters. A decade of anger and pain and resentment had made such a miniscule distance elongate to an unbridgeable chasm, one she doesn’t think she could even hope to build towards crossing.

She allows her hand to lower in defeat.

* * *

The singing bells of the tower cry the hour of gloaming as Ellena approaches the hallowed gates of the death temple. She passes through clover-shaped arches and follows the floating vowels of hymnals expelled from honey-lacquered throats in rich, velvety vocals. The choral melodies both soothed and chilled her, like receiving an embrace from someone who had just come in from the cold.

A sense of solemnity and quiet introspection descends like a veil upon her shoulders, as was common for those who stepped upon hallowed ground, though the melancholia coaxed by that of the death temple existed in a paradoxical axis to the jubilation often found within the temples of life.

She kneels down in deference before the altar of Hadrian, head bowed and knees flat against the floor. The carved effigy that displayed his likeness radiates with tender warmth and benevolence as she sets down offerings of coconut candies, flowers and milk to aid her love in the afterlife. Her fingers tentatively encircle the gold that weighs down her ears; broad-bottomed hoops fetched from the coasts of Malakia that her late love had presented to her as a birthday gift, or perhaps it was for Lovers’ Day, the complete tale alluded her now. She fiercely decides against parting with them, for even the living required tribute from the dead to aid them through their mortal coil, and slowly she rises to her feet.

The burial grounds were a long, rugged sprawl of ungroomed herbage and bulbous mushroom heads. A biweekly maintenance had ensured that the tangle of florets and berry brambles had been halted in their stealthy encroachment but they did little to keep nature fully at bay. Ellena had always found a soft comfort in that, in the thought that in the event of her death her body might be used as a bed to nurse flowers.

Before she became a healer she had fancied herself a mortician and had recalled learning of the burial process for the bodies, how they would scoop out their organs like seeds and pulp and stuff them deep full of flowers, leaves and herbs like they were pies as offerings to the ferryman and the earthworms in the soil.

Most graves were distinguished by a chiselled stone slate and she finds his in the usual spot, gently laid with sunflowers. The blossoms seemed to be a recent addition and in a flickering moment of hesitation she debates the logistics of having to dodge members of his kin. _Here Lies Naveen Sunbloom,_ reads the inscription. She drapes herself atop of it and squeezes a few tears into the stone, allowing herself to be sad and heavy and immensely sorry as she nuzzles her cheek against the rugged rock the way she might once have done his chest.

Perhaps in a world where she were less foolish or in times less unfair then she might have been doing so now. She could be leaving her clinic to arrive into the heartening warmth of the home they made together with his cheeks still dusted with flour or spice from the meal he had cooked for them. Perhaps they might even have had children, little springy haired imps with his deep dimples and her green-flecked eyes.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” feeble words spoken from the lips of one who had nothing more to offer than her hollow apologies. She still wore the word _mog_ like a disease in her blood, her half-mundane heritage, but even worse still was the long, asphyxiating shadow cast by her father’s name more than his magical status that smothered out anything that might hope to grow out from it until it could only become twisted and mangled and wrong. Her doomed engagement was just another in the long list of casualties that occurred under the denomination of Sadik Nagin and his notorious Salt Ring.

She touches two fingers to her lips, presses it tenderly to the stone and adjusting the silk drape around her shoulder she walks away from that magi she’d once pledged her eternity to.


	12. Ferity

There are many arts with which he is intimately familiar, from sketching to line art to the most abstract of grotesqueness. The mediums of charcoal and turpentine have both left their indelible imprint upon his fingers but most potent for him of all was the viscid stain of blood and arterial matter. How he can take apart one’s physical form and refashion it into a tapestry of carnal imaginings; mosaics pieced together from different shades of bruising, patchwork hides and splattered murals of viscera.

His fingers were long and limber, attached to hands that were capable of working without tire at a canvas ambidextrously. They were hands carved for artistry, for music-making, with more of a slant towards tenderness than torment one might think. And perhaps at one time he would’ve agreed with such an assessment, for there once had been a boy who used to sit in marmoreal stillness to ink the animated series of a bird in flight, who used to try so very hard to capture anything and put it to paper simply because it had been the only way he could fathom of keeping it near him.

That boy had been weak.

Dominus had revelled in his brutal obliteration, all that timid and mollycoddled fear that forever snuggled into mother’s crinoline. It was not tenderness that had propelled him through the slush-drenched trenches of the various conflicts he had lived to relay. Not the burnished admiration for a brother nor the carnivorous love for a mother. All that bloated, tumorous affection he had once held for his kin had only served to deform him, pin him down, strip him back to infantile uncertainty. He was glad to be rid of it, to be rid of them both.

The fresh coat of gore that slickens his boots now still held that coppery aftertaste that lingers like cologne in the back of his throat. For a moment he just sighs out in the raw headiness of it, the carnal stench and the intensely gratifying endorphic buzz in his veins. They never tell you how it’s always going to hit you like that first, dizzying shot of opiate, how the feel of bones splintering beneath your grip releases more tension than any deep tissue rub-down.

He descends from the heights of his euphoria to refocus his attention upon the mundane that he’d snatched and the swollen, jagged lumps that composed what remained of his legs. “Are you ready to talk now?”

The mundane tries meekly to drag himself along the gravel, away from the seclusion of the alleyway and back out amongst the defensive bustle of Ambhoja traffic.

Dominus lets him squirm for as long as it amuses him before he slams his boot down upon his calf and the man’s cry comes weak and vibratory from ragged vocals. “Tell me where Sadik Nagin is tonight, I know that you personally like to drive him around,”

Making a discovery of that information had been simple enough, for he had been making a study of the progression of his sprawling empire for some time now. It wasn’t far one travelled in this hub of commercialised paradise without coming across billboard advertisements of the Salt Ring entrepreneur and its glossy lacquered finish with the enchanted auditory animation of his velvet-thick drawl imploring you to buy wares from his alchemy merchants.

In these past few decades of hiding where he had walked among the citizens of Thalistan under the cloak of disguise, he had watched in real time the birth of the mogul and his unprecedented rise to success. Mundanes rarely came into wealth so miraculously, not without there being some unsavoury means involved behind it. Dominus knows it to be as true here in the so-lauded idyllic continent of Vysteria as it was back home and he was thankful that Sadik had not disappointed in that assumption. Beneath the guise of zany potions and spell reagents was an interconnected network of smuggling, poaching, arms dealing and gambling.

Suffice it to say, the man has money and means, two things that he is in dire need of and a common crook would be a far more easily exploitable mark than a more reputable target and presumably far less likely to turn to the aid of Solarites than any of the magifolk. So he digs his steel-capped toe into the femoral artery of the mundane.

“You are making me lose my patience,” he emits through gritted teeth as the man squirms and brays like a donkey until finally, he says:

“The Tiger’s Eye, he’s at the club tonight-”

Dominus gradually removes his foot. “Thank you for your cooperation,”

“You’ll-you’ll let me go now right? Now I’ve told you what you wanted?”

He listens intently and smiles earnestly. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, I can’t leave any chance that you might spoil the surprise of my visit now can I?”

“No, no please, no, _no-”_

He shatters the man’s skull beneath his boot with a wet, gooey squelch and brains scatter like seeds across the gravel. An eye pops free of its sockets and rolls leisurely for a few paces before it slows to a halt peppered with tiny flecks of stone.

* * *

“Whoa now, hold on there fellow, I’m afraid that I can’t let you in.” The bouncer at the nightclub entrance holds out a hand to bar the way.

Dominus leaps out of touching distance, taut muscles flexing, as painstakingly he unscrews his jaw to question: “What are you talking about?”

“Tonight’s entrance requires a full evening attire and I'm afraid you're not quite up to scratch.” And he follows it up with such a searing look of disdain that Dominus loses all hope of peaceful conduct.

“Then clearly you misunderstand me,” Dominus says with a sudden extension of his claws “because I am very much up to scratch,”

He moves too slowly, they always do, and soon his claws are embedded in the soft, exposed underbelly before the bouncer could so much as think to reach for his firearm.

Dominus exhales in relief as his claws sink in to further explore the hot, sticky innards and the spongy fat of intestinal tract as his victim gives a helpless, choked gurgle and his blood pours like syrup from his parted lips.

Dominus retracts his claws and deposits the flimsy mass of gangly doll limbs onto the street before stepping over him. Then he shoves open the doors of the club until it crackles with sprays of splintered wood.

The patrons at the bar halt, the dancers freeze mid-pose and even the music sputters to a flaccid, premature finish as all consciousness in the room finds a new body to orbit.

He sees himself in the reflection of their meagre vision: the blacked-out eyes and their glowing discs of greenish gold, his unsuitable clothes now bleached within the fluorescent glare of spotlight to which the tenebrous splotches that remained from his recent kill provide a startling contrast.

“Now that I have your attention.” Dominus makes a declarative projection of his gravel-ragged vocals. “I was hoping I might request your assistance: Where is Sadik Nagin?”

In the near distance, he senses the shuffling of bodies as two presumably Seraji guards step daringly forward, a perilous glow forming in their palms which they project as an onslaught of streaming fire.

His stony visage merely splints with a smile as he raises a defensive palm and thieves the oxygen from the charging flames until they dissipate and the guards' faces begin to crease with exhaustion. “I was hoping we might do this civilly,”

He ejects a thick cord of corporeal darkness and uses it to lasso around the waist of the first Seraji and haul them within his reach as swiftly and tirelessly he fractures their spine over his knee. The next he advances upon within moments and decapitates with a dismissive swipe of his hand. They crumble so easily at the least touch, he laments, as the Seraji’s neck ruptures with a small geyser of blood.

“Well?” He snags a stray patron next, a gaudily-dressed little dancer with arms like a bird. “Are you going to come out Sadik or do I have to dispose of all your income?”

The dancer squirms like a mouse. “Please, please don't kill me, oh gods, I don't want to die-”

“Shh,” he slams a paw over her mouth, softly now as not to crush her out of carelessness. He could peel her skin like wallpaper if he wanted, crumble her bones like chalk. “Easy there, not to worry. I don't intend to hurt you,”

“So you're not going to kill me?” she whispers tearfully.

“Of course I am, how else do you expect Sadik to get the message? I just don’t intend for you to suffer,”

He snaps her neck and a collective gasp ripples through the crowd as she descends with an ungrateful slump to the floor.

“Alright now, alright-" from the balcony his finely tuned hearing narrows upon a man dark as midnight suited in white silk brocade embroidered with gold. “I think you've made your point here, monster,” and languidly he glides down the steps to the landing before the ground floor with the aid of his cane; a solid gold piece shaped in the form of a hooded cobra adorned with a mother of pearl orbs. “Here I am,”

“Sadik Nagin,” Dominus savours the name on his tongue as finally, he stands before him. “You're a difficult man to reach,”

The mogul leans casually against the stair rail. “For good reason, as you have so poignantly demonstrated though it's not every day I'm blessed with the presence of visiting royalty,” from a distance he can see how his black eyes twinkle at Dominus’ surprise. “What is it that I might do for you?”

“I know you are a wealthy man, that you have access to boats and endless resources. Charter me one for Mortos and ensure that I will be escorted safely and without detection,”

“And why exactly should I spend such an exorbitant amount of funds for a known fugitive who slaughtered their way indiscriminately into my establishment when I could simply report you to Soleterea and fill my pockets for the trouble?”

“I don't think you fully understand the situation here,” Dominus’ says, face darkening “either you give me what I want or I slaughter every last person in this room,”

Sadik bows his head in acknowledgement. “Your negotiating skills could use some work, monster,” he rises up his cane almost in consideration as his hand slides up the expanse of the staff. “Let me tell you something,”

He aims the staff towards him and shoots. A projectile embeds itself within Dominus’ chest and he accepts it with a smile, knowing whatever effect it may hold would be useless against him. That was until it takes hold. And slowly, his blood begins to congeal and stiffen in his veins and he can feel every strain of pressure as his circulation attempts to wiggle through to his rapidly waning heart.

“What have you-" he can only stop to glean at the webbing black veins in his forearms before lack of oxygen forces him to yield consciousness.

* * *

When he awakens, his head begins to surface as though he were held underwater. He feels at once, lightweight, drifting, and then slowly tethered once more to the lawful bind of gravity, hyperconscious of every frantic leapfrog lurch of his chest as his bloating heart works to drum circulation back through his arteries.

He realises at once that he was chained and could hear the ceaseless chatter of them with every slight half-inch movement of his wrists. Though his pulse has triumphantly resumed, his veins are still a stiffened black protuberance like dried twigs. He gives a perfunctory tug of his chain, testing, they didn’t budge an inch but for the sudden oscillating stream of light that irradiates the metal.

“Wouldn’t fancy your chances of slipping free of those bracelets there, monster-” the sonorous vocals of Sadik rebound against the metal walls as Dominus’ eyes dart rapidly to triangulate the source. He finds him seated in a raised booth concealed within reinforced-glass. When his eyes eventually find his own, he smiles and raises his cocktail glass in salute, it was filled with a luminescent concoction rimmed with slices of lime and an umbrella. “Now those chains there are special-made, genuine meteorite, perfect fit for an Occassi such as yourself and insusceptible against the forces of magic,”

Dominus clenches his fists, willpower warring against the futility that the incessant blathering of the mundane was in fact correct. He tries his best to summon a curse to shatter the window only to be rewarded with a sharp wasp-sting of pain from his shackles.

“Stubborn, aren’t you? Not used to being bested, I gather, especially from a harmless little old vago like me, a magic-free mundane.” Sadik spreads his arms in a neutral shrug. “But you know, that’s actually what I love about black magic. And I mean the real black magic, the potent kind, none of this watered down back-alley brew stirred in a cauldron type business, no. Real black magic. True chaos. Well, it favours us all,”

Of course, he’d recognised the potent signature of chaotic magic the moment it had been used upon him. What he currently can’t fathom is just how this mewling sack of flesh and excrement had come to acquire it. “If this is your idea of torture… then I must commend you… for I’d rather suffer a miserable death than be forced to endure another second of your drivelling,”

“Well, well, it speaks.” He seems delighted by this sudden development. “But contrary to what you might be used to down in Mortos, I don’t quite believe in torture, never had the right incentive. No, I just intend to hold you here as long as it takes for the Brothers to come and take you off my hands,”

He can’t allow his journey to come to such a snivelling defeat as this, not after all he has suffered. He scrapes his mind for any figment of an idea that might lead him out of this predicament. But bound in chains with his magic impotent, he finds himself swiftly out of options. He doesn’t know the first thing to say that might sway a mundane of this nature.

Darius had always been the talker, the one with the throat full of sonnets, the silvered tongue and its serrated edge. Dominus used to watch him make fine work of his victims, how smoothly he peeled back skin and pierced through arterial muscle, how effortlessly he burrowed through skull and severed thought processes. With him, the weapons were the words and he never needed to pause for reloading.

“Turning me over to Soleterea so easily-” his voice crackles before he moistens his lips “seems foolish… when I could be so much more useful to you free,”

Sadik stirs a cocktail stick in his glass and takes a sip. “I don’t quite see how that adds up. I let you loose and you snap my neck the moment you’re handy, the way you did that poor dancer down at the club who did nothing but mind her own business. I have very little use for loose cannons like you, monster, it’s detrimental in the realm of business,”

“You let me free… and I will consider it a life’s debt… and I always repay my debts. Just ask your daughter,”

He sees immediately that the mention of her was the wrong thing to say as all mirth immediately drains from his face. “What do you know about my daughter?”

“She’s a healer… she saved my life… and now I owe her… just like I will owe you… and you may exact it any way you wish,”

He can tell that the mention of his daughter has disturbed him to a point that Dominus starts to worry is beyond salvation.

Sadik makes a bridge with both hands and taps it idly against his mouth for a few moments. “I’ll think it over, monster.” He drains his glass and shuffles across to the exit. “I may just have a task for you yet,”


	13. Schadenfreude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not sure what to do with or about Reisa since her original purpose deviated some time ago. However, there are cases where she can provide certain insight that other POV characters cannot so it isn't a matter of cutting her. I just need to find a way to restructure her role in the plot that eases in better than it does at present. 
> 
> I may have to take some time out from updating further to get the plot back under control so I'm just going to post the last ones I have and then leave it at that for the time being. If anyone is interested I can send them snippets of updates on discord.
> 
> I'm going to be changing names a lot as I go through a lot of edits and I don't always bother to update AO3 in the aftermath so if you see some weird name changes just know that they're intentional most of the time.
> 
> A large Darius chapter shall proceed after this one.

Though her period of surveillance in Mortos has been ludicrously brief, the one thing Reisa has come to learn during her time here is that Gravissia truly is a city that never sleeps. Beneath the ancient and indecipherable veneer lay a hotbed of constant nocturnal activity filled with the kaleidoscopic grandeur of circus shows and bloodsport. But even hidden beneath that is a vulgar melange of vice and decadence offered in flagrant exposition to the corrupted souls that converge here. Intoxicants cajole on every street corner with dens and public houses that practically ooze with somnium and cigar smog.

Buried deep in the more affluent underground of Gravissia there was a place called the Memory Palace. There, Occassi of certain distinguished stock would venture to sample and critique a variety of traumas extracted from the most unwilling participants for clarity, ambience, potency, flavour and finish and ingest them as though they were fine spirits. There were grisly recollections of many types, the most potent forms of spiritual suffering you could ever imagine - shaken, stirred and mixed into cocktails to be served alongside dainty morsels and fat cigars. All for the delight of the exclusive few to slake their abhorrent appetites as they grow rapturous with their pleasure.

Reisa enters the establishment draped like a fine fur shawl upon the arm of Delanus Levantis having used the considerable sway of his name and repute to gain entrance. She has transitioned her hair to that of a more intense black hue than her usual chestnut locks were accustomed to appearing and her brown eyes are disguised by enticingly green lenses. Her eyes and a good portion of her face were artfully obscured by a birdcage veil with an elaborately feathered hat.

“The act of processing negative emotion into containers is a refined process not terribly known to many,” Delanus had informed her just before they pass through the roped gate and through the chilled nectar-scented mist that greets them upon entrance. “If anyone is to have an in-depth knowledge of this method enough to perform the ritual or at least be able to teach it, then it would be the owner of this establishment,”

She takes greedy note of this, devouring every syllable of intelligence he could provide her with to better navigate this aberration of a country and culture.

“Now whilst we’re in this establishment Reisa I’m going to need you to pay close attention and follow my lead,” Delanus addresses her with the stern air of an instructor. “Try therefore to keep your usual antics to a minimum,”

Mortesians, so touchy they were. Especially that of the Occassi stock. All that swaggering machismo and hypersensitive emotion brimming beneath a delicate seal of stoicism. He really has her thinking that she might have hurt his feelings or something.

“You’re not still sore about my little fib from earlier Delanus, surely?” Reisa prods with gleeful cunning as her crimson-lacquered lips peel back into a wolfish smile. “And here I was thinking we'd already kissed and made up,”

She hears the faint surrussus of his muted sigh. “You may cease with the flirtation too whilst you're at it. His Highness may turn a blind eye to your behaviour but I-”  before he can continue the sight of familiar faces coax him once more into performance. He returns every courteous bow of a head by touching the brim of his high-crowned cap and makes brief trivial badinage with the fellow patrons.

“You are known here,” Reisa observes once he has dismissed the most recent greeter.

“I am known everywhere,” Delanus boldly retorts “I am Primus Praetor second in power only to the rex himself, it is my duty to know people and to be known,”

Reisa quirks a brow in amusement. “Hope your wife doesn't mind me coming out in public on your arm,”

“I’m not going to tell her,” he says and then notices her confusion “why in Calante's name would I? This is politics, not pleasure, I do not share matters of the court with my family,”

Reisa couldn't fathom any sort of partnership with a person who so flagrantly refused to share such an essential part of his life with her, government secrecy withstanding. But as with all matters here in Mortos, she is here to observe, not judge.

“So who is it that we are looking for?” she asks, deciding it best to change the subject.

“An Occassi called Daggerfinger,”

She smiles ironically. “Sounds charming,”

“Severo is the name but the moniker is far more befitting, you'll soon see why,”

Now, this is definitely something she wanted to see. They pass through an array of crowded booths, enticing appetizers and various displays of pomp and merriment before finally, they reach the bar.

“Primus Delanus, it is an honour,” the bartender behind the counter immediately bristles with the acknowledgement of aristocracy in his presence. “May I offer you and your guest the usual?”

“Ah- not today, Bruno.” Delanus makes a dismissive gesture.

Reisa, however, smiles ravishingly. “And just what it is the usual-”

“Do not answer her,”

The bartender's eyes flit with wild uncertainty between what was undoubtedly a powerplay between monster and magi.

“Don't worry, honey, it wouldn't do much for me anyway,” she assures him with a wink “you do have non-suffering spirits in stock don't you?”

“You don't drink,” Delanus interjects.

“Paying attention I notice, I was merely curious,”

“If not an elixir then what can I offer you?” Bruno quickly asserts himself with a genial disposition.

Delanus glows in relief at being reverted back on track. “I need to speak with Daggerfinger,”

“I'm afraid that won't be possible now, sire, he is quite-” a muffled shriek perforates the otherwise dignified atmosphere of the lubricating elite. Not even a ripple do they make, for them, it may as well be ambient music. “-busy,”

“Tell him it's urgent, a matter of the Crown.” Delanus presses forward, elbow draped authoritatively across the countertop. “He will not deny me,”

With a dutiful nod, the young cub shuffles off to meet his master as Reisa leans back against the bar in a lackadaisical fashion and tries not to make any affirming gesture to any of the weapons currently at her disposal whether it be the setâre wood chopsticks that currently secure her dyed locks into place or her firearm bracelet.

The bracelet itself is heavily inscribed with rune-work in ostentatious patterning which ignites with a feverishly red glow upon her summoning. Firearms they were named for only those touched with the elemental flame were fit to wield them as with just a thought, an exertion of will, they could kindle a tiny combustion in their cartridges to eject a bullet.

It was not fear, she tells herself, that has her mind veering towards any defences she has in place but rightful wary as one only can have when faced with an incomprehensible foe. At least the amaranthum charm that makes it cot between her breasts will take care of one specific disadvantage: black magic.

The young bartender soon returns with a plucky resolve in his step. “Senior Severo will see you now,”

They are escorted to a rather sumptuous backroom where molten satin runs red as lava, as though they have stepped into the throbbing mouth of a volcano with all its dolorous humidity. Velvet blinds smother out the sunlight for good, relegating all source of brightness in the room to the wrought iron oil lamps. Chiselled out by the glow of the flames like a sculpture was Daggerfinger who rests in leonine repose on his desk chair, ankles crossed over the expanse of his desk.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Great Leviathan himself.” Daggerfinger drops one foot with a resounding smack on to the carpeted floor, followed by the other. “To what do I owe the pleasure, _sire_ ,” the address of respect lingers with a sneer.

Reisa keeps her mind solely focused on making a note of the exits.

Delanus is unperturbed by the clear disdain on the part of the fellow Occassi. “I come here on behalf of the Crown to question you about this,” he retrieves the box from his pocket and sets it down on the desk for Daggerfinger to peruse. “Recognise it?”

The impassive business owner merely receives it with a shrug. “Am I supposed to?”

“It is a memory box, same as the containers that I know you craft here in mass production. I know that you are one of the few who has refined the process to the point of commercial success. It’s how you built your fortune upon this place-” Delanus makes a quick sweeping gesture around the vicinity “that was found on the person of a terrorist, a traitor, so I think it very important that you do not lie to me, Daggerfinger,”

“A traitor,” Daggerfinger echoes with a whooping laugh “tell me something, sire, do you consider yourself a patriot?”

Delanus’ spine turns rigid. “Without question, I love Mortos with all my heart, I have killed for it, bled for it, and would do so again happily,”

“Then do tell me-” Daggerfinger steeples his fingers “because I am most curious what with this recent government upheaval, just why it is you and the rex are content to grab your ankles and let those Solarite cunts fuck us raw,”

Reisa keeps her eyes firmly fixtured upon Delanus as the Occassi begins to inflate with a flicker of righteous indignation. “You’d do well to watch your tongue, Daggerfinger,” he warns, his voice serrated “and answer my questions, lest you would rather be taken back to the Keep to be questioned more intimately,”

“Alright,” he cackles and throws his hands behind his head “I don’t know a fucking thing about that box or where it came from, how’s that for an answer?”

“Pitiful, actually,” Delanus retorts as all light from his eyes begin to recede and blot with the pigment of ink. “How about you try that again with the truth this time?”

Daggerfinger is already on his feet, fangs exerted with a rumbling growl in his prominent bobbling throat. “How about instead I rip out the throat of your pretty little lady over there?” He leaps towards her with a ravenous snarl and claws hooked like a sickle.

Reisa’s muscles react autonomously as she tugs a chopstick from her hair and javelin throws it right through the vulnerable eye socket. His eye pops like a cherry with a dispersion of juice-blood as he sinks like a stone in water. It was always interesting, the sounds an Occassi makes when it was in pain. Not quite like the shrill yelps she is accustomed to in other races. When in suffering, their pitches dip into a low, almost gurgling baritone, deep like a bass, a seismic rumble.

Once on the ground, she moves close enough to mount her foot atop his chest and slowly grinds the thick stump of her heel where she knows his heart to be. “Don’t let the appearance fool you, the heel is charmed to conceal a stake of setâre wood. Do me a favour and make me use it.” For good measure, she screws her heel into his chest and prods him with the tip of the stake just enough to affirm her threat.

All the while Delanus still stands in a mild defensive which he gradually uncoils himself from to come to Reisa’s side with a scolding cluck of the tongue. “And here I was hoping that we could resolve this like civilised beasts, Daggerfinger,”

He takes off his hat as though in sympathy for what he knows will come next.

* * *

Reisa has been to the dungeons twice before so she already knows what to expect of this noxious pit of corrosive heat. The dungeon is said to be the oldest part of the Keep and the one most resistant to refurbishment. Once, when the Occassi were still new and impetuous and full of all that foolish, foolish hubris the House of Calantis had carved a niche for themselves on top of a lava lake which they continued to keep as a reservoir to extract geothermal energy and provide a perilous, excruciating torment to their political enemies.

Now only the former was meant to be true, at least officially, the cacophony of cries, pleas and guttural grunts could more than attest to the latter but the atrocities that took place here would never see the stamp of the official seal.

Reisa remains on the furthermost floor of the dungeon, away from most of the waxing heat of the lava lake that begged to strip the meat from her bones but still, the humidity lingers, sticky and distracting, it volumises her hair and liquefies her clothes to the silhouette of her curves.

She had meant to question Daggerfinger here, or at least that had been the original agenda before Darius had arrived with such a composed grace and canary-eating simper and had assured her so benignly with a gentle tuck of her hair behind her ear that he would be able to take over from this point.

She still doesn’t understand why she lets him disarm her with such glib displays of flattery and silk-tongued words but he makes himself seem so earnest in the moment that a part of your mind wants to forget that behind the cuddlesome bear exterior was just as much a fearsome predator as the rest of them.

By the time he comes back, the screaming had finally ceased and he emerges up the steps with sleeves rolled back, tie loosened and a slightly dishevelled array of lustrous hair. Upon sight of her, he instinctively thinks to slick back his hair with ichor-stained fingers, painting inky smears through the impeccable locks, and neatens his tie.

“Well, what did he tell you?” she asks.

“Not much,” he responds with scintillating brightness “but the good news is I was able to refute his earlier lie. He made the box himself, special order apparently, can’t quite give me a name or reason though which is… irksome.”

Seeing the predatory gleam in his eye she suddenly thinks to ask. “Is he alive?”

Darius tilts his head sideways. “Mostly, minus a few inessential organs, it’s always rather fascinated me how well we can keep going as long as our hearts and minds remain fully intact.”

Her skin prickles when he smiles at her like she’d suddenly depleted in temperature. His blue eyes were so hyperboreal that she feels rigor mortis set into her muscles they meet her. “You did very well today, Reisa, I am honoured to consider you an ally,”

And although there was not even the implicit hint of a threat she can’t help but infer for him that he was grateful not to consider her an enemy. A sentiment she more than heartily agreed with.

“Well, I don’t know about you but I happen to think some tea is in order,” he says and lightly skirts past her shoulder with his own before resting his death-chilled hand atop it. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up and then meet me in the apartments?” He is already breezing up the steps with a jaunty whistle, likely to get started on his own extensive grooming.

* * *

She decides to take a shower in the end. Her armoured clothes cling to her skin like fruit rinds as she peels them layer by layer to reveal the succulent flesh beneath, the plump, full-bodied curves full of juice before she hangs them on the clothes rail.

She steps inside the shower and lets the day’s events melt off her surface in toxins and perspiration until she is stainless and squeaky-clean. She scrubs using the provided soap of resinous herbs and lily-of-the-valley. It smells of graveyards and condolences.

Reisa thinks she remembers being told that the water here is plundered from the impassable wall of glaciers that border the north. She thinks it might be the cleanest thing they ever produce here, pristine and entirely without blemish, and yet even that is as sterile and devoid of life as all else.

She leaves her hair for last and lets the hair tint bleed through the tangle of coiled strands as dead clumps of hair skitter past her shoulders like the bodies of spiders. The pressure from the water suppresses its rambunctious bounce into more subdued straightness. She rinses it through with the toiletries she imported from Malakia, a marinade of salts and oils which she traps within her curls and then wraps with silk.

With the moisture that has saturated deep into her scalp, she generates a steam treatment as she migrates from the bathroom back to her quarters gift-wrapped in a cotton-wool towel. She strips off the towel once she reaches the bed allowing herself to be triumphantly naked and slathers her body in cocoa butter.

She sees that Morgana has already taken the time out of her rigorous housekeeping schedule to leave her some clothes hung on top of the dresser. Reisa hears the rickety sound of her departure down the hallway as she dresses and finds inside her pocket a letter to the steward with the news that Crown Princess Laila will be making a diplomatic visit.

She smiles and makes certain to return the letter when she next has the opportunity and leaves Morgana one of her most expensive rosewater face masks before making haste to the underground passageway to the royal apartments.


	14. Nympholepsy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter so many times. I don't know if any other chapter has as many rewrites as this fucking thing right here. I know I'm not really supposed to edit but I couldn't help it with this one considering it contains a lot of the politicking and I need to make sure that is coherent.
> 
> Anyway I mentioned to someone in the audience about Darius being super ridiculous when it comes to Laila. This is the ridiculous chapter. Enjoy.

Darius arrives into the drawing room scrubbed clean of all the earlier grime until he is buffed with the usual polish. As ever, he has poured himself into the confines of a bespoke suit embroidered with the silver of moonlight thread that compresses every rugged inch of him neatly within the outline. Even his hair retains a moistened gloss with a fine lacquer of pomade.

The ghouls have already put together a tea set as he had requested. There is the customary tea urn with its pot of burnt honey, toasted black bread topped with dry-cured salmon and a dollop of sour cream, warm stinging nettle pancakes smothered with lingonberry compote and sugar-frosted lemon bread. He has even added coffee powder in accordance to the request of Reisa.

He sips his tea from the glass as his eyes rove over the emerald green box on the table. It is poised in the shape of a closed blossom with a floral design in gold leaf that oscillates with an aureate gleam. The box is flawlessly made, a product of Soleterean craftsmanship if he has ever seen one. He has already unpinned the clasp and unwound the fine gold thread to set free the intricately folded paper bird that unravels into an invitation for Laila’s annual midsummer bal masque.

What he had not anticipated was the later letter of address that she was determined for it to take place at the obsidian hall of the Keep rather than the Crystal Palace Ballroom.

“What are you playing at, Laila?” he questions aloud.

He knows a demand when he sees one even dictated in such frilly airs and though her earthday would be on the sixteenth of this month the masquerade itself was due a full ten days from the current date to fall in line with the Vysterian Day of Lovers. This, along with the news that she will be taking over the duties as diplomatic ambassador, already has the castle in a bit of a tizzy and himself in quiet introspection.

“Well, it’s certainly one way of making a statement,” Delanus quips as he stirs casually at his tea. “The council will likely accept though I’m certain some of the noble houses will have opinions about celebrating foreign cultural traditions,”

“Soleterea has never so much as suggested we dismantle Calantism to convert to Caelestis even if they have imposed major holidays to our calendar,” Darius points out “and she has even taken the initiative to correspond the theme with our upcoming Hexacost. Perhaps some cultural mixing would do a bit of good at bridging the gaps between our worlds not to mention the prestige at being the first outside of the capital to host such a momentous event. The other provinces fear us for our reputation of brutality, Delanus, let us show them that we are capable of presenting gentility just as well.”

He already knows many careful machinations will have been invested into this event save for the spur of the moment venue change and from what he’s heard, parties thrown by the Solarites were often fabled. From the nectarean cuisine to the illusory decoration, the experience was nothing short of psychedelic.

“You trust her then, the Crown Princess?” Delanus asks, not realising it was the entirely wrong question to pose towards him. Trust was an indispensable resource to someone such as Darius, restricted near to the point of obsolescence.

“Princess Laila has given me no reason to believe she is another puppet of her mother,” he says instead “she can, therefore, be reasoned with,”

“When can we expect her?”

“Tomorrow, I have already sent word to the steward to prepare for a feast.” As ambassador, she will require a more stable form of dwellings of course but that will take time to prepare.

He catches the scent of Reisa arriving into the vicinity in a thick haze of scented soap and velvety-rich cocoa butter. She’d changed her toiletries. “Please sit,” he encourages, gesturing to one of the many tufted leather seats in the room.

She does as he says and he passes her a cup of coffee in a silver coffee mug embossed with the royal crest.

“I recognise our cuisine here isn’t anything like Seraj but I am hoping you’ve been adjusting well in any case.” Darius lets free a soft exhale of laughter “I’m sure you’re familiar with the rumour that Seraji food is supposedly so spicy it is meant to set one’s tongue alight.”

She sips at her coffee. “An embellishment of a somewhat truth, in the harvest period we always hold a Spice Festival and there we have a spice-eating contest where the one who can withstand the spiciest dish wins. Sometimes the dishes become so compacted with seasoning that you can only taste the heat in your mouth.”

“You miss your home,” he phrases it as a statement rather than a question, his blue-green eyes softening.

“Occasionally,” her voice grows very cryptic “but I enjoy serving my country,”

“Hopefully one day you’ll return there,” Delanus interjects.

Darius feels his mouth begin to twitch in anticipation for what will undoubtedly come next.

Reisa’s brow scales upwards as she gives him an affected flutter of her lashes. “I believe you’d be rather beside yourself without my presence, Primus Delanus,”

He senses Delanus tense as he lays an amiable hand on top of his shoulder and squeezes with all his marmoreal strength. “Calm yourself Delanus, you know she only teases you so well because you react.” He helps himself to a slice of lemon bread. “Besides which we ought to be congratulating her conduct with our unfortunate Senior Severo. I believe I’ll keep him locked up a little longer and see if some private time gives him an opportunity for reflection,”

He takes a bite of lemon bread and makes an orgasmic sound. In Mortos it was the sour, piquant flavours that were the most favoured: vinegar, tomatoes, garlic, peppers and of course, lemons. The stimulation to such refined taste receptors as theirs was always a welcome experience.

“With Severo locked up I’m certain it’s going to make the rest of them rather antsy, I wouldn’t be surprised if they burrow underground for a little while,” Delanus says, with a rather bitter edge to it that shows it bothers him.

“According to the gargoyles Andreas made his unsuccessful drop off at some unmarked warehouse, I already have LACE on the alert to keep their eyes on it and potentially infiltrate it should there be conspirators inside.”

“And what is it that you would like for me to do?” Reisa asserts with her usual impertinent presumption.

Darius smiles, sucking icing off the tip of his thumb. “No further assignments for now Reisa, but I shall let you know of any updates,”

With that, she nods in affirmation, sets down her empty coffee cup and with a feline gait makes her swift departure from the room.

“I don’t trust her,” Delanus says once he is certain she is out of earshot.

“She is a spy, by definition you are not meant to,” Darius reiterates “but rather than argue with you about this again I have preparations to attend to.”

He reaches for the rotary phone within arm’s length and makes a phone call to the office of the steward.

* * *

Laila arrives like the dawn, a soft and hopeful emanation of rosy-orange sun over the gnarled peaks of decrepit rooftops. Darius stands upon the outskirts of the castle steps watching the milk-white gleam of her imperial motor-carriage as it touches down to the courtyard and a servant descends to open it.

He sees the glowy residue of her first spilling out onto pavement before she soon follows with a bobble of seafoam curls teasing against her shoulder blades. She is dressed in pink lace threaded with grape hyacinth and beaded currants in patterns that fall in a continuous cursive that only manage to coyly shield her abundant curves from prying eyes.

The sight of her transports him to the very first time she had taken those first fateful steps onto Mortesian soil and sapped all words and moisture from his lips. No sooner after he’d caught a glimpse of her had his father sobered him with a backhanded strike: _That is your brother’s bride you stare so brazenly at._

And once more is he the ill-begotten child of an unwilling mother and impassive father, destined forever to know the victory of the firstborn in name only while his younger supersedes him in the race for all things. He thinks about that sometimes. About how mother had cast him into the snow and how father had stomped his face into it and yet he still picked up, twitching and determined, desirous of everything he knew he ought not to be whether it be of crown or courtship.

She is no longer Dominus’ now though no sooner is she his. But at least he could come to gaze at her with the same remote amazement that one musters for all things of natural wonder without any fear of chastising.

He approaches Laila as she encloses the space between them and reaches first for her hand but not before she gets the grip on his shoulder and leans in to touch her lips against his in a chaste kiss. It was a customary greeting in a place like Soleterea but far too intimate in this sort of setting and he can’t seem to keep his lips from following hers as she moves away.

“Thank you for having me, Darius Rex,” she says, fracturing the enchantment and he becomes once more suddenly aware of his surroundings.

“It’s an honour to receive your company as always,” he says, though part of him can’t help but consider it may be a mistake to have her so near where he can’t even simply reach out to frame the prominence of her cheek and have her smile all to himself for just a cursed moment longer. “In preparation for your arrival, I have called a preliminary council meeting. Please allow me to escort you,”

He needs to be certain of her intentions in coming here whether that be of her own volition or as an agent sent on behalf of her mother. His entire approach to her hinges upon knowing where her primary allegiance will be placed.

He holds out his arm for her to take.

She slides in the svelte pillar of her limb and locks them at the elbow as he escorts her up the steps into the yawning corridors of the Keep.

“I was surprised to hear of your recent ambitions with regards to diplomacy,” he mentions once they were further in the throat of the castle. “Even less that your mother even agreed to send you,”

“Previous diplomats seem to have been approaching from an admittedly anti-Occassi bias,” Laila admits, almost charmingly sheepish, as though her mother hadn't planned it that very way from the start. “I only want to do my best to maintain the peace between our nations,”

He’ll have to see how well she held up to that declaration as he opens the doors to the council room and finds it already fully stocked with praefects. Delanus had already claimed his seat at his right hand with Augustus Veritis, his Praefect of Finance, on the left. Upon sight of him and Laila close to his side, they stand to attention.

“As you may have already been informed, Princess Laila will be succeeding Celine Daystar in the role of ambassador for Soleterea. She will, therefore, be seated during this council meeting,” Darius pauses for a menacing flicker in his lips “I trust you will welcome her warmly,”

He pulls out a chair to seat her before assuming his own position at the head of the table.

Even as a peripheral object of the room Laila manages to siphon attention in the way a hummingbird drains nectar from a fruit. “My purpose here today is to gather information to relay back to Soleterea in order to survey our interests. I, therefore, encourage you all to speak candidly about how you consider our current arrangement to be progressing, all feedback, both positive and negative, will be a vital contribution to this report.” She glances around the room with an innocuous smile in her eyes and all the brimming allure of a newborn star.

Augustus is the first to break the fast of silence. “As the empress may well have already heard we are grateful for the contributions that the empire has been making towards our markets. With no tariffs on trade and lower-priced imports, we have seen an increased stock of various goods that at one time would only have been made available to the wealthiest of society. This has become of immense benefit to our merchant class. However-” his voice transfers to that of a more sombre octave. “Our reliance upon Thalistan and Malakia for crops and fish has had a negative impact on farming. Farmers in Mortos find it difficult to compete on the same level as a country that can churn out such a large amount of output and all magically aided as have our fishers been unable to keep up with your overflowing waters. With our soil continuing to be what it currently is domestic farmers have suffered immensely which has contributed to some rather… vocally apprehensive landowners.”

At this, he casts a scant glance towards Valeria Domina who as the sole Occasselle in the room would have noticeable draw enough but combined with the enigmatic aura of blood magic and its polluting scent her presence remains palpable. Crop production had long been caged inside the black talon grip of the Vidua Nocte and a shift in domination had made them antsy much to the apprehension of many of his praefects. Though many would relish the chance to toss that particular daemon off their backs they were so sooner happy to submit themselves to Solarite domination. It was the common parable of a rock and a hard place.

“Could we not appease the landowners with the offer of subsidies? At least to sustain them until a more long-term solution is managed,” Laila offers, twisting the end of the ribbon on her neck.

“I have already broached the issue with Empress Amira who seemed reluctant to invest in certain economic interests though I have made offers that I feel will be of benefit to Vysteria as a whole,” Darius explains “Valeria Domina is our representative for the Vidua Nocte, also known as the largest crop cultivators in the country. As well as crops and dairy products they happen to cultivate many poisonous species of plants that when synthesised can be used to create analgesics and psychotropics, among other things, with enough backing I see the potential for great strides in the realm of pharmaceuticals,”

Laila turns her attention to Valeria. “If need be I would be happy to set up my own grant to fund your goals and Aihka has no shortage of fruit walls which are vastly superior to your greenhouses. How about I look into importing?”

“Actually that reminds me of a more pertinent issues, Your Radiance,” Delanus mentions, ever the steadfast patriot “Vysteria’s immigration policies, Thalistan’s in particular, they seem rather rigorous in their strictness with regards to Occassi what with the black magic registry and the tattooing, the latter of which many of us happen to find dehumanising.”

“With respect to you Primus Delanus, we do allow a measure of autonomy to our nation states within the empire. Tattooing is a staple to Thalit culture and the marking of Occassi is merely a reflection of that practice. As for the registry, that is mostly a safety measure all things considered, with the influx of Occassi immigrants has come a wave of black magic related crimes to an extent that we have never before been forced to deal with.”

“Chaos magic or black magic as you have known it,” Delanus replies impatiently “is enshrined within our DNA you could no more extract from it us by force than you could remove our souls.” Then he stops as the slow rise of a chuckle reaches his lips. “Well, I speak in figurative terms, I know very well if the empress wanted to she could, in fact, do just that.”

A silence descends upon the council as Darius can sense in the sudden flurry of recollection that swirls up like autumn leaves that they are remembering the very public ceremony of his father, head bowed and knees bent in a bovine placidity, at the mercy of Empress Amira as she slowly milked him dry of his power and sentenced him to banishment. Before that very moment, he had always thought the Occassi will to be imperishable. Nothing could’ve prepared him for that sudden loss of spirit, snuffed out like a candle flame by licked fingertips.

Laila merely stares at him with the impassive sentience of a marble figure. “I can discuss readjusting the measures of immigration with Parlement with particular note to the tattooing practice but I feel that will take some persuasion,”

“Of course,” Delanus concedes “Occassi have only ever used marks as a symbol of marriage, you can, therefore, understand the intimacy of it,”

Darius does not miss that Delanus negates to mention the other use. “We also take a hard line stance against those with deportations for misuse of their magic. We encourage Vysteria not to allow a few delinquents to colour their lens with which they come to regard us with.” He laces his fingers together on his chest. “Which in fact brings me to your party and the potential costs involved,”

“You will not have to worry about that, I intend to cover the costs of everything with regards to catering, entertainment, decoration, all will be imported from Soleterea and of course to conclude I will be hosting a charity auction, the proceeds of which I will be donating entirely to Mortesians in need,” she smiles, and how brightly it strips away the curtains and allows light to saturate the most neglected of corners. “You’ll only have to worry about having fun I hope,”

“Well if the costs will be covered, I see no reason to object,” Valeria drawls with a soft trill of laughter. “Been a while since we’ve had a party worth remembering in my opinion,”

Darius reveals his teeth in a saurian smirk. “I’m guessing it’ll be of a rather different nature than the blood orgies and infant sacrifices that you’ll be accustomed to in the Vidua Nocte, Valeria Domina,”

“Pity,” she pouts, and with a leisurely flex of her fingers, she allows her iron-armoured filigree claws to pitter-patter against the tabletop.

“Well, I believe we have heard enough to adjourn this meeting,” Darius says, as he stands and tweaks his cufflinks and realigns his signet ring. “Any pressing matters can, of course, be redirected to our ambassador at the embassy,”

His praefects rise with rousing murmurs and clicking joints as they slowly begin to disperse between the doors of the council room until only he and Laila are left.

“Well,” Darius says, hands pocketed “I don’t know about you but I happen to think that went swi-”

His sentence is abruptly halted by the cushioned snuff of Laila’s lips against his. It is soon followed by the tangle of her arms around his neck and the eager eclipse of all space between their bodies and he can only stiffen, bewildered, before autonomously he reacts only to pull her in tighter.

She kisses him with soft, lingering glides of her lips and he can hear every gentle hitch of her breath as he gives into the plump, pillowed softness of them before she pulls away. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I arrived,” she admits, as demurely she slides a loose curl behind her ear and dips her chin with eyes risen up like the sun behind a forest of lashes before she leans into him again.

He breaks the kiss with a soft noise. “Laila,” he says, pulling away for a sobering breath. “Not here,”

He watches her deflate for a prolonged moment before she pastes over it with a smile. “I should be in the country for quite a while,” she says, as absently her fingers come to play with his jacket lapels. “You could come and visit, at the embassy I mean-” she loosens a button before rebuttoning it “we’ll need to have plenty of diplomatic relations I’m sure,”

He swallows, taking a step back as he realises with frightful acuteness that this may, in fact, become a problem. The others had been so easy to fell, mere shadowy regurgitations of Amira’s espoused views and attitudes and transparently clear prejudices. He had taken eager pleasure in outwitting and outmanoeuvring those who had once stood in her place. Yet, her, he still can’t bring himself to even watch frown for too long without feeling something catch in his throat.

“I’ll swing by sometime, I promise,” he tells her, all the blithe charm he can muster seeping into his tone with a practised affectation. “In the meantime, I will see you tonight when you come to dine with me,”

She steals one last kiss from him as with a fleetingly coy look over her shoulder she pivots a full turn on her heel and walks away.

* * *

The dinner itself he has arranged in his personal dining quarters which lay adjacent to his master bedroom. The room is cavernous and speckled with tiny crystal formations that seep from the walls and the ceiling like dew, embalming the entire area in their radiant, incandescent heat.

For the preparations he spares no expense, having entertained everything from the prism-cut crystal glasses to the ornately patterned chinaware with the ivory frieze carved expertly into the lip of the plate.

The dishes perspire with appetizing steam, from the oysters and their edible pearls and a garnish of strawberry mignonette sauce to the honey-oozing figs, the sweet saffron rice and exquisite fruits poached in rosewater. All courses were elegantly arranged around the main at the centrepiece; a roast swan dipped in rose petal sauce set alongside slices of pomegranate and tangerine.

Darius sits impatiently, fidgeting absently with his tie for what might be the seventh time that evening until he hears the familiar clack of hard-soled ballet pumps.

Her scent dances in his nostrils, the limpid, sultry vapour of midsummer; a condensation of sunlight, vanilla, soft peach and sweet orange intermingled with white, creamy floral notes. He feels his fangs itch at his gums.

Laila enters wearing a flimsy looking garb of spun-gold silk with a pattern of padparadscha sapphires embroidered into the shoulders that extends into a cloak. The dress clings to her skin like it was poured onto her forming a thin layer of molten fabric that ripples languidly with every fluid gesture.

“I could smell the dinner from down the hall, it appears you have outdone yourself,” she says, tucking a loose curl of hair behind her ear that springs free once more as she takes in her surroundings. “Oh my,” she gasps aloud and takes a tentative step towards the walls to press the pad of her finger against a crystal.

“I had them harvested from the ores of one of our caves,” he explains, as he watches the tiny white flame of her whimsical delight, a beacon that far outshone any light source the room provided. “I happen to think it reminiscent of the night sky,” and at the very least he could offer her this, an artificial imitation of her past celestial life so that she might at once become a star again.

Laila is still tracing the formations on the wall like she might attach them together in a constellation. “It’s sublime,” she says and her grin unfurls like the warm yellow bud in the centre of a pink rose before she steps away to join him at the table.

He leaps up to pull out a chair for her. “I tried to ensure a few things arrived from your home to make you best comfortable,” he explains, tucking in her chair once she is seated. “Rosewater, pomegranates, strawberries, saffron, there are a lot of your favourites present,”

She surveys his offering with a critical brow raised that for a moment reminds him of her mother.

“Do you like it?” he asks, uncertainty lengthening each syllable in the sentence. What to offer the creature who was greedy of her own skin and sweat and sinew? Who traded in sensuality like they were silks. You could placate her, dangle shiny trinkets before her gaze, clasp her long, brown throat in pretty baubles. Mere morsels for her ephemeral appetites; she’d not be cossetted by material gains alone and he knows it.

Even if he’d come on metaphorical bended knee with his kingdom offered in hand he knew she’d reject it within an instant if another came along, ribs exposed, the pulsing red fruit in the centre of it ripe for the picking.

He’d never been able to lay bare himself in such a way before, but especially not now; two hundred years of ruin and rot had merely fossilised the worst of his attributes.

Still, he can't help but feel something cleanse the damp in his lungs and singe through the congestion in his chest when she smiles at him. “It'll do,”

He returns the smile with his own as he sits and watches Laila fill her plate with whatever delicacies happen to be within reach. “Be sure to try the oysters especially,” he advises, helping himself to one.

“I have to ask, why go to all this trouble?” she wants to know, sipping from her glass of rosé wine, her favourite.

“I wanted your first official evening here to be pleasant,” Darius admits, his fingers tented as a smile carves itself into every nook of his face “and I  suppose I wanted to understand a little more about what brought you back here,”

There is the soft scrape of a fork as she takes a bite out of poached fruit and swipes the juice at the corner of her mouth with her tongue. “It wasn't for you if that's what you're asking,”

He tilts his head in amusement.

“My mother's reign ends in twenty-four years and after that, we elect a new empress to take her place. Our dynasty elders and Parlement have something of a lengthy say in it so… I merely want to present myself as an option,”

“I suppose you consider the diplomatic situation in Mortos a decent jumping off point.” Darius swirls his glass thoughtfully, a leader succeeding Amira who didn't have Mortos’ best interests at heart could certainly be problematic for him and yet he'd been allowing the immediate conflicts to take mental precedence for now. This would have to be remedied.

Laila sets down her fork neatly. “We all have our causes and no one else really wants to put the work in here so it's free terrain,”

“Well in the interest of preserving Mortesian interests you'd certainly have my backing,” he says, then with a nervous swipe of his lips “more personally I think you'd be exemplary at it,”

She had shrewdness enough and knew how to soften it with mercy as all good leaders must. Someone perfectly suited to his side had circumstances been different.

“First course and already with the flattery, Darius.” She traces the rim of her cup as a slim smile of coquetry perks up her lips. “Looks as though we may get to those diplomatic relations after all,”

He swallows very thickly.

* * *

They scarcely make it to the bedroom before they have each other fully undressed, their hands and mouths eager in their slow exploration of each other’s bodies.

Her hands are practically throttling him as she tears off his tie and then decimates his shirt sending a spray of buttons flying in all directions before she glides her hands up the granitic hardness of his abdomen and the chiselled plates of muscle, following it with a fervent kiss which they both practically just melt into.

He peels her out of that fragile fray she calls a garment and takes her even flimsier underwear with it as she fumbles with his belt to shove his trousers down. Once bare their bodies fuse together in an embrace as Laila pins him beneath her on the bed with considerable strength and nips softly at a pressure point in his collarbone with her teeth, sucking until it bruised.

What a magnificent predator she would make, he thinks, as she arches back to stretch the red bow of her lips into a lascivious smirk. He lifts her up by her hips to settle her thighs on either side of his head and trails a line of kisses against the warm inner skin and slides his tongue against the crease before he dips it inside her.

He hears Laila’s choked little gasp in approval as his tongue glides languidly against each side of the soft outer flesh with a meticulous caress before he flicks the tip against the hardened pit at the centre and sucks it gently between his lips. He spells words with his tongue as her hips grind towards him and her fingers tangle in his hair to pull him forward. He presses his mouth eagerly against her, savouring every ambrosial drop, encouraged by every sigh and whimper she expels as her nails scrabble against his scalp, her thighs turning to stone around him. Then he pulls away.

“Why did you _stop_?” she protests with a soft gasp-hiccup.

He cups his hands around the ample roundedness of her thighs and kisses the inside of her knee. “Tell me I can trust you,”

“What?” she asks, mind still in the haze of suspended satiation.

“Tell me that you’ll never turn against me to your mother to suit your interests.” He follows it with the wet, slippery glide of a thumb against her.

She moans like an aubade. “You really want to do this now while we’re having sex,”

“Give me what I want,” he says, adding a finger and he could feel every tight contraction of her muscles before he pulls out. “And I’ll give you what you want,”

He hears her whine again and lifts his eyes to see her face, she never looks more radiant than in the glow of her pleasure.

“Was it not you who requested we not discuss politics when we were together?” she reminds him “you’re despicable,”

“I know,” he concedes and laces the fingers of his free hand through her own. “But what do you say?”

She studies him with eyes that are heavy-lidded, her cheeks flushed with daubs of rosy-red and her forehead glistening with beaded pearls of sweat. “Suppose I just crawl off of you and finish this off myself?”

“It’s an option,” he reasons, kissing another trail up her thigh before he stops. “Though there are certain things that cannot be accomplished without assistance,”

To demonstrate, he massages the flat pad of his tongue against her as she gasps. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point, _just-”_

He feels the quake of her thighs around him as he begins to pull away.

There is a dainty raise in her ample bosom as she sighs and smooths her damp, sticky curls away from her face. “I told you before that I am not here on behalf of my mother, Darius, I am here on behalf of myself and the last thing I intend to do is something that will harm you. Can you trust that?”  

In answer, he places his head back between her thighs to kiss her intently as Laila releases a moan of relief. His fingers ease their way inside her to linger with a crook of the tip before he is rewarded by her sated exhale and the warm surge of her release as she reaches her peak.

“ _Gods_ ,” she sighs out as she takes his wrist in her soft grip and presses a kiss to the pulse on the inside of it. “You are far too good at that.” She presses her lips to the palm of his hand and then moves to suck what remains of her from his thumb and then his finger.

She is watching him intently as she does so, the dimpling furrow that begins in his brow and his hitched breaths as her cheeks hollow around his finger and her tongue swirls with a feathery texture around the tip.

He sighs out. “Laila,”

“I haven’t had a turn yet,” she protests with a sulky pout.

She leans in to explore him with her lips like he is a continent undiscovered. The slope of his neck, the peaks of his nipples, the valley of his abdomen, nothing of him was left untouched in her journey as she reaches his lower abdomen and the hot whorl of her breath sends a shivery surge right through to his hardened erection. Then her lips move down an inch.

He surrenders himself over to her as her mouth engulfs him with a skilful swirl of her tongue, draining him of strength and stamina until he can only collapse against her superior might in defeat.

When they had both exhausted themselves of one another he manages to part himself from her long enough to quietly re-dress and on light, imperceptible footsteps he makes his way into the drawing room where he finds Delanus already awaiting him.

“You know,” he declares as he swirls a glass of amber liquid. He tips his glass to sip and the ice gives a noisy chatter as they scale atop one another. “When you told me that the Crown Princess could be reasoned with, I didn’t think you meant in the same way that Reisa could be reasoned with,”

His muscles flex instinctively, an animalistic defence, which he does not loosen from even as he speaks. “If you have something to declare, Delanus, go ahead and declare it,”

He sets his glass down with a loud clap on the table. “I can still smell her on you,” he says, with a sharp bark of laughter short on its heels. “But I suppose that figures, doesn’t it? I suppose the next time Empress Amira raises a grievance you’ll fuck your way into her good graces too,”

“If she’ll have me,” Darius quips.

Delanus scoffs in disgust.

“Have your moral qualms if you so wish, Delanus, but a tactic only becomes obsolete when it ceases its usefulness and this one happens to be working quite well for me,”

Let him think what he will about the nature of his and Laila’s relationship, it was safer to let him draw his own conclusions.

“Is it not enough for certain areas of the common public to think that we are being figuratively fucked by the Solarites without you lending credence to that rumour? These people think that Vysteria is a threat to us, to our way of life, that they mean to weaken and castrate us and soften us into  trained circus animals where we were once something to fear,”

Darius drags a hand down his cheeks, grazing his fingers against his stubble. “And just who might be spreading this hearsay?”

“They’re calling themselves Laniators,” Delanus snorts whilst taking up his glass again “they’re composed of lesser dominators mainly who believe we have grown cosseted in our time of tenuous peace with the other races, that we’ve forgotten our roots and what it means for us to be predators,”

“So they’re reactionaries,” Darius concludes with nonchalance “there will always be counter-movements to change, Delanus, and I hardly desire to debate with anyone who wants to catapult us back into the Dark Ages where we all expired by the masses over some petty neighbourly disputes,”

“Yes, well, you need to nip this in the bud, Darius, whilst it’s still small,”

“These are scared animals who realise that their grip on the ladder is loosening and are reacting in turn,” Darius assures him as seamlessly he reaches for a tumbler and pours himself a glass. “In truth, the farms are failing and we all know it but those who rely on it to provide their bread and butter are the most reluctant to accept. It’s security they want and they know that they are losing their serfs to my factories.” He takes a small sip. “I’ll buy them off if need be and if they don’t respond to money then I shall have to… take a firmer hand.”


	15. Repose

“So it appears you were right all along, Mata, it was my diet that was irritating my constitution. Once I followed your advice and altered the spices I was adding to my food that eczema practically disappeared,”

The sweet, medicinal scent of fragrant herbs has a palliative effect on Ellena’s fraying nerves as she nods in absent, yet indulgent response to the words of the Argentine Sister across the counter from her.

“I’m very pleased to hear that,” she says, beaming with a genial warmth like a furnace in mid-winter. “It was always rather fascinating for me to learn just how much whatever element we choose to embody seems to alter our genetic structure. Fire elementals such as yourself may, therefore, become more highly resistant to heat and burning, for example, but it tends to manifest in how our bodies react to illness as well,”

It was why so many had come to observe such high levels of inflammatory disorders in those who are fire elementals such as rashes, heartburn and ulcers whereas elementals who possessed the power of water were more prone to congestion of the arteries and sinus. Even more psychological illnesses have detectable patterns of occurrence which correspond to whatever element the magi happened to be. It was all very stimulating to an inquisitive mind like Ellena’s and reminded her of the immense joy she derived from her study of physiology.

“I’m still using the remedy you prescribed me of course, that’s another miracle worker if I do say so,” chuckles the soldier as she leans heavily against the counter and depletes her voice to a cosy whisper. “Personally I can’t remember having skin so soft since I was a babe,”

Ellena smiles again, using a touch more muscle to hold the elasticity of it in place.

In truth, she hadn’t slept. She could not find an optimal position to deflate the swelling sickness that had collected in her stomach since she’d heard what happened to those soldiers and then later at the Tiger’s Eye. If only she hadn’t been so _afraid_ of unravelling the knots of her grief, her deeply-ingrained resentments, her anger. Then perhaps Isla Ribeiro would have lived to bask beneath another spotlight. The families of those fallen guards would not be arriving to collect the dismantled remains of their loved ones.

She looks towards the soldier and she thinks, these were likely comrades of her own, her brothers and sisters, and she’d aided their murderer into escaping justice. She can’t remember feeling anymore ashamed. And never could she understand this thing called Death and how it always made merciless claims of the meek and undeserving while the predacious were left to roam without blemish.

“I ought to be returning to the barracks again, Mata,” says the soldier and so Ellena swallows all these unspoken confessions of her remorse and reaches for the lightly steaming glass teapot on the burner.

“Please, take some tea with you before you go,” she says, with maternal nudging insistence and doesn’t even wait for her to answer before she pours her a sample in a paper cup. “It’s freshly made and I’ve added some echinacea which is excellent for the skin,”

She takes the tea and lifts it towards her in a saluting gesture before she walks out of the clinic and into the brightness of the daylight. Ellena watches her leave, entranced by the way sun grazes the burnished black dragon scales of her armoured carapace and slowly draws to light several hidden shades of purple and green and pink. Since the news of the Occassi reached the press, a steady increase of military presence had collected in the city of Ambhoja and its surrounding outskirts which included the sleepy, bucolic village of Parvani.

As Ellena closes up shop for the conclusion of another full day’s work, she ponders on whether or not it might be helpful to reach out towards them with her admittedly limited insight. She’d seen the lair of the beast after all and known her father to be his next approachable target. Perhaps if she was forthcoming with her information enough then they wouldn’t think less of her for fulfilling her duty of care which she already understood to immunise her from any legal repercussion.

Though it wasn’t her own skin she sought to preserve rather than that of others, knowing that this creature was dangerous and still at large made all the blood in her veins refrigerate and not even a full exposure to the Thalit summer with its backyard grilling heat could hope to thaw her again.

So it with the unslaked bite of winter chill in her veins that Ellena makes the resolution to approach the sheriff with all that she knew and prostrate herself before the mercy of the justice system and with enough conviction she can just about make her legs go a little steadier and her stomach roil with a little less intensity. That is, at least, until she feels that mammalian tingle in her hindbrain that distinctly warns that she is being watched.

You never really lose those primal instincts, you see, though neglect may dull the blade of their focus and comfort further subject them to rust. But it always strikes like this, a niggling itch, a subtle increase in the heart rate which reiterates itself in the twitch of your leg muscles to flee or to fight. Ellena does neither. Ellena keeps going at her restful pace and as she does so withdraws her compact mirror to check the blank slate of her face and aims it behind her.

The silhouette of the motor carriage was almost jarringly conspicuous, the make and model easily distinguishable amongst the modest hansom cabs and bicycles she’d come to anticipate from the village transport. And that’s when she knows immediately who it belongs to. No one else would ever think to ride in something so visibly ostentatious as the mint green paintwork and serpentine ornamentation could only attest for.

She finds her suspicions to be confirmed when the vehicle slows to a crawl beside her and the steam pipes spout their clear white exhaust fumes. Then the tinted window rolls down to reveal her father’s face.

“The clinic is off-limits to you and you know that,” she hisses at him, her hands coming to rest upon her hips in indignation. It was perhaps the first words she had properly spoken to him within a decade and yet, as always, his expression remains saccharine as though he were perennially frozen within the first throes of paternal love that had sprouted the moment she had come to air between her mother’s thighs.

“I know that. I do. I know but this is urgent,”

She glances away from him, exhaling softly.

“I’m going to need you to get into the car, Ellena,”

Her smooth forehead furrows in an amalgam of confusion and annoyance. “I’m not going anywhere with you,”

“Please, Ela,” he presses, leaning even further out of the window. “It’s about the creature you met in the forest,”

She is not prepared for what that revelation does to her stomach as suddenly the muscles in her legs constrict to a deadening stillness. “You- you saw him?”

The news neglected to mention any presence of her father on the night of the attack. She didn’t think- she didn’t think. After he had backed down so serenely from her refusals at the clinic she never would’ve anticipated that he would go on to enact such horrific displays of violence.

He seemed unharmed however as he opens the passenger door and nudges it open. “Get in and we’ll talk,”

She glances around in uncertainty, sighing heavily, and when she breathes again it comes with an intake of sweet jasmine and cool conditioned air.

“Fine,” she says, a short, filed syllable that offered nothing more than what was stated. She slides into the seat and closes the door behind her before the carriage speeds down the highway.

The carriage glides through the air as a bird does. She remembers when they were younger she would always fight with Mariam for the opportunity to stick her head out of the window and let her hair fan out like a flag at a speed that almost seemed designed to fracture her neck.

“You look well,” her father says, and it splinters through whatever carefree reminiscence the carriage provoked. When she doesn’t respond to him, he continues. “I know that you still don’t forgive me, Ellena, and that’s… that’s alright, you know?” He swallows thickly, adjusts the frame of his sunglasses. She’s always wondered what would become of him when all the pages of his finely inked vocabulary finally ran blank.

It was her turn to swallow the lump that congeals in her throat. “What seems to be the problem, father?”

He calls for one of his many associates to pass him a glass of water and immediately drains it dry. Her father. She often remembers the way she used to be so _awed_ by him, the way he only needs to speak a word, make a gesture to draw anyone into the sticky field of his magnetic allure. No one ever refused him, when he walked into a room everyone immediately turned their head and knew his name, spoke it like a mantra and here he was stuttering with fear before his own relation.

“The Occassi, did it hurt you?” he asks.

“No,” she says and distractedly she fiddles with her earring. “Did he hurt you?”

He shakes his head, his face cracking into a shaky smile. “Nah, no, not a scratch.” He balances the bottom of his glass on his knee. “I may have done something exceptionally foolish, Ellena, and it’s possible I may need you to see me through it,”

Whatever neutrality she may have been feigning before soon gives way into anger. “What have you done now?”

“When that monster came barrelling into the club I managed to subdue it, trap it, I thought perhaps I’d just sell him out to the Solarites and be done with the whole thing but-” his voice cracks and face crumples and for the briefest moment he turns from her. “He started babbling on about owing debts and how you’d helped him when he was dying and he promised me he would repay the favour if I let him out-”

Her breath suddenly becomes very, very shallow. “Please tell me you didn’t let him out,”

He only looks at her.

“What in oblivion is wrong with you?” she sputters like a kettle overheated and had she not been in a carriage seat she would’ve stood. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What you just unleashed? Why would you _do_ that?” Her face steams, adrenaline emptying its courage-infusing chemical through her bloodstream as suddenly she wants nothing more than to open the inevitably locked door and dive roll into the open street.

“Thirty-one,” her father says and removes his sunglasses to tuck one handle into his suit pocket. “That’s how many mundanes have gone missing this past year, all snatched up in the night, quiet-like, no connections between them, no common denominator besides the fact that they are all mundanes,”

“What does that have to do with the Occassi?”

“I told him if he helps me find them then he can have whatever he wants from me,” he says, then holds up his hand in defence “creature only wants to get back home to his people I assume, far be it from me to stop him, but he’s strong and he’s powerful and he can find his way into places that I, unfortunately, can’t right now so I’m willing to take my chances,”

This is too much, she thinks, clutching her temples as another question soon pops into her immediate train of thought. “So where are you taking me?”

She slides over to the window to peer out of the gloomy screen only to see no landscape that she recognises.

“To my beach house, where I’m keeping him,” her father explains “I need you to talk to him for me, see if he’s on the level. You know him, in some respects, and he seems to hold you in certain high esteem and you’re sincere, earnest, he’ll open up to you,”

The worst part is she can’t even muster up enough surprise to even begin to feel frustrated. “All this time and you’re still exactly the same,”

He has the grace to look away from her. “This isn’t about me, Ellena, nor is it about my gain, this is about my people and where I come from. I would never have made it to where I am without the help of a lot of good people with good hearts and I do not intend to turn my back on them now. If that means I have to make a deal with a daemon then I will do it. But you say the word, I turn the carriage around. Your choice.”

The carriage jerks to a sudden halt as the doors click with a release and out of impulse she lunges for the latch, tugs it open, indulging in the warm caress of buttery sunlight on her arm coaxing her to freedom. But she can’t do it. She knows that immediately and as she knows her father knows it too.

See, she and Mariam, they never had to care in the same way that he did, blessed as they were with their mother’s magic. They were shielded from the full brunt that came with true mundanity where all the doors that swung shut for their father would graciously open to receive them. And he’d never held it against them for that, not once. Not even now she could see, even as the disappointment rimmed his eyes, would he ever guilt her for turning away from her more maligned heritage.

So she closes the door with a sigh and neatens her hair. “Take me to him,”

And the carriage picks up once more in its journey.

* * *

Her father’s beach house is located in some private area by the coast bordering Malakia.

She hadn’t been here since she was at least thirteen but recognised it to be one of his favourite properties for much like Mariam, her father seemed to have an insatiable love affair with the ocean which she only partially understood.

Ellena steps out and swallows a mouthful of briny air, watching as the sun sinks beneath the soft lapping waves of turquoise and bleeds it blood orange. There are moments of perfect stillness that can only be accomplished in forgotten havens like these where it just happened to be you and your hushed, indulgent breaths in tandem with the tide rolling its lukewarm blanket over the shoreline and at once she can understand her relations a little more even if her own personal serenity came in the form of heavily wooded areas.

Her father stirs her from her trance with a light touch at the small of her back. “This way, honeybee,”

There is something that catches in her throat at the use of the familiar nickname that felt too invasively intimate in this circumstance. “Please, don’t,”

He pauses, almost as though uncertain of his error and she understands he hadn’t even realised what he’d called her. He doesn’t press the issue however and so she lets her complaint rest for the time being as he leads her into the remote villa with its cerulean facade held up on twisted pillars. It is umbrellaed by a veranda patterned with terracotta roof tiles while on the first storey a curvaceous balcony bulges with foliate-patterned iron and whimsically arched windows.

They climb the few steps to the hooded archway as he unlocks the front door and heavy salted air is instead replaced with the domestic aromas of a well-kept home, warm in her airways like an embrace. She takes off her shoes at the porch and takes one tentative barefoot step onto the priceless Seraji rug on the foyer.

“He’ll be in this room,” her father advises as he leads the way and opens one of the doors that lead into a spare room.

With a deep, sobering breath she enters it and is most surprised to find that the Occassi is painting. He had neatly assembled himself a little artist’s nook in the corner of the room and barricaded it with glass jars of mismatching heights all stained at the rim with paints. His fingers were stained too with a vigorously colourful palette of the deluxe paints her father had provided him. Her paints. Each time he makes a concentrated swipe of one pad to fill in the outline with such tender, precise strokes that she never would’ve thought were possible for hands of his size.

This is a creature who brutally fractured the neck of one magi and dismantled several others and yet looking at him now she couldn’t see it in him, this archaic daemon of terror and mayhem. Even as he looks at her all those years in his eyes had quickly receded to reveal the untainted expression of youth. “Hello, Mata Paw,”

She inches forward and fiddles uncomfortably with her cotton saree. “Hello,” she says and with a rather prying extension of her neck she asks, “what are you painting?”

“My home,” he explains rather placidly and thus he shows her this bleak, fog-stained landscape of pitch black sand and a sea as pale as mist. “It may not seem much like it to you but there is beauty in Mortos, never in my time on this earth have I ever seen anything quite like it. Rivers and skylines that run red as the blood in your veins, forests where the trees are so mangled they almost resemble people. And beaches like these, black as midnight, with ice shards that glitter like diamonds beneath the moonlight and a sea that is white as milk.”

It is the most she has ever heard him speak in those deep and ragged vocals of his and covertly the harsh inflexions of a Mortesian accent impose themselves into his speech.

“You seem to miss it,” she says and claims herself a seat at the table a safe distance away from him.

The Occassi’s jaw gives a visible twitch. “I do, but I ought to be returning there soon.” His luminescent eyes drift quickly over her and past her shoulders to where her father stood. “Your father was telling me about your missing mundane problem, I assume that’s why you are here?”

He sets down his paint brushes which up until that moment he had been dual-wielding against the canvas to paint from both angles to the point that his hands became a streaky, multi-coloured blur until the landscape was complete.

Not knowing what else to say Ellena chooses the route of diplomacy. “My father seems to think that you can aid in solving their disappearances,”

The Occassi makes a noise of amusement that jolts through his shoulders like a shockwave. “And what is that you think, Mata Paw?” he wants to know and swivels around on his seat so that she now has the full potency of his gaze upon her. There is something frightfully angular and feline about his eyes, green like the vibrancy of grass grown over burial grounds.

“I think that you are a killer,” she says, without thinking and behind her, she can hear the sharp intake of her father. “I think that you are an animal and you should be put away before you are allowed to cause anyone else harm,”

He smiles but there is nothing savage in it. “If nothing else then I appreciate your honesty for I am indeed all that you say, a killer and an animal both, your father would do well to remember that for calling upon my aid.” He lets his gaze drift pointedly to the man behind her once more and Ellena is stirred with the realisation that without hesitation would she place herself in the path of this rampaging beast to ensure his protection. “However I am also a warrior among all else and I have a warrior’s honour, I keep my oaths, for a creature who cannot be trusted to keep his word and his loyalty is worse than any spineless serpent. You aided me to safety and regardless of your frailty and your nuisance I must respect that, so will I respect the terms of the arrangement I agreed with your father. I will return his thirty-one lost comrades to him and after that, leave to claim my throne in Mortos,”

She receives the last of his speech like a backhand and blinking blearily she asks. “Claim your throne?”

“What you didn’t know?” asks her father as he steps forward to comically nudge her shoulder with his hand. “You’re looking at the lost heir of Mortos himself, Prince Dominus,”

She stares, listlessly, at the Occassi who had come to incline his head in a regal stance befitting of his title.


	16. Whimsy

Drakalyk Castle is a picturesque manor of soft-toned masonry reminiscent of fresh gingerbread pulled warm from the oven. It is capped with onion domes in slate grey which are further ornamented with vulturine weathervanes and statuettes which, even in spite of the otherwise romantic architecture, tinge the luxurious abode with an undertone of omen. The estate was often reserved for the honour of visiting royalty and though her status was currently a diplomat Laila was still afforded a lot of the more exclusive amenities due to her title.

Her velvet shoes pad hurriedly around the vicinity as she makes clipped, exuberant demands of her servants to rearrange the interiors to her ultimate liking. She has imported many of the fixtures she considered essential in her Soleterean home from the floccose throws to the bobbin lace netting which she now uses to craft an exhibition of her innermost self. To quantify every one her girlish reveries and fanciful whims and transfigure them into no more than a mint green chaise lounge that sprawls just as dramatically as she does. She takes these material things and used them to solidify herself into being.

The meticulous preening of her appearance accomplished much of the same. She was finding her reflection in the mirror of others’ sensory acknowledgement of her. In that through their desire, their scorn, their awed disbelief, she can make herself feel a little more real.

Whilst pacing Aurora stops her to offer her a warm glass of hazelnut milk mixed with orange blossom honey.

“Thank you,” Laila says, taking soft sips and licking away the residue that clings to her upper lip.

“You seemed like you needed it,” she explains, her own hard leather soles rubbing against the reflective ivory floorboards. “So, this is going to be our new home for the foreseeable future?”

At the use of the plural, Laila can’t help but smile. “I can’t thank you enough for coming,”

“Of course,” Aurora responds with a dismissive gesture of her hand. “Did you think I was going to leave you in this frozen nether-hole alone?”

She laughs, a soft silvered trill which relaxes into the ease of a smile. “I would not have blamed you in the least if you chose to keep serving in Crystal Palace,”

“Well, the weather is appalling and the people are bleak, but I keep hearing of these sudatory rooms full of sweating, muscular warriors and clear springs, so perhaps all is not lost,”

“I second the motion of finding these sudatory rooms,” Leander reiterates, bright as a bell as he springs from wherever alcove he was previously occupying.

Now Laila is full on frothing with a giggle. “I believe those areas are male-only Aurora, so Leander might have better luck at voyeurism than you do,”

“Rules are made to be tested,” Aurora asserts, with a sly wink.

“You are both awful,” Laila admonishes “and I thought that you despised the Occassi,”

“Oh trust me, I still fully adhere to the doctrine that they are soulless abominations better laid to rest,” Leander quips, hand earnestly placed against chest “perhaps I just want to better understand what it is about Darius Rex that keeps you running to him so eagerly,”

Aurora giggles.

Laila rolls her eyes. “I am only going to the Keep to straighten out the details for the upcoming bal masque and I hope that you two have your outfits prepared, the last thing I need is for you to embarrass me,”

“Us embarrass _you_?” Leander emphasises, with such a guileless fluttering of his pale lashes over glassy blue eyes.

“And who do you think is behind the design of all these outfits?” Aurora says, clucks her tongue “do not ever insult my honour in such a way again,”

Laila leans in to press a chaste, apologetic kiss to Aurora’s lips.

“You are forgiven.”

“And I really must get going,” she insists, detaching herself from the bustle of her household to craft a portal that will lead her to Gravissia.

* * *

When she arrives at the steps of the Keep, Mordred is already awaiting her.

“Ah,” Laila declares brightly “just the ghoul I was hoping to see, please, walk with me, talk with me.” She loops her arm through his own as he escorts her to the obsidian hall so named for its construction that was formed entirely of the volcanic glass and enchanted to remain unshattered. It is this room with its lustrous reflective walls that she will craft into her underwater wonderland.

“So to start I will entertain the masses with bubble nectar fountains which will swell and float upwards and pop into every waiting glass, each colour they transform into will correspond with a specific taste or mood and scent,” she declares as she bounds energetically towards one of the walls, her footfalls echoing. “Then comes the dinner where the tables, flatware, glasses, etcetera will all be formed entirely of still water with a containment of fish and other sea life visibly swimming inside them. They will, of course, be enchanted to never melt or slip whilst entertaining us during the five-course meal will be the siren quartet and their most fabled ballads.” She touches a wall and watches it oscillate and reflect the illusion of an aquatic setting. “The walls here will also be enchanted to reflect sea life and a conch shell band will entertain the resulting festivities after dinner. The lighting will be provided by a bioluminescent pixie show which people can observe freely on the ceiling.”

Pleased with her planning she gives an exhilarated exhale and lift of her shoulders to finish as she turns to her waiting audience of one only to be met with the silence of a grave. “You know you could at least… try to be enthusiastic,” she deflates with a sulky snuffle and petulant scuff of her shoe before tucking a loose, springy curl behind her ear. “What I get for planning with a corpse, I suppose,”

“I have had time to survey the menu you sent me. Will Her Radiance be requiring live preparation during her serving of the dishes?” Mordred drones, without even a slight rupture to his indifferent pitch. “Many of the legates do favour having their meat served still fresh from the kill.”

“Yes, I am aware,” she retorts, her nose wrinkling for it was no wonder when she ate here that the meat always tasted so raw as though they still might scream in agony between her lips. At least the fish would not suffer. “But I think a live preparation of the fish will definitely enhance the performance and give the Occassi their much-needed bit of bloodshed.”

Mordred bows in acknowledgement.

Their upcoming Hexacost, the Day of Daemons, had already taken some factoring into the decision of her theme for what other way to exhibit the deep and tremendous depths they had arisen from than the ocean itself? She had been rather pleased with the ingenuity of the idea and matched with the tropical ambience it would evoke Laila had invested every spare bit of creative energy into bringing this event to life.

“So,” she declares with a clap “the fountains are on their way, the entertainment booked, the menu is completed… what am I forgetting?” She manifests a clipboard and pencil from thin air and taps rhythmically down her list. “Flowers? Check. Decorations? Check-”

“A date?” Darius offers helpfully.

She rounds on him in fear. “Darius Rex,” she yelps, gesturing wildly “would you please refrain from sneaking up on me?”

“My apologies,” he says, a smirk touching his lips. “Some instincts are still buried rather deep,” he smoothes down his lapels, straightens his cufflinks. “I was wondering if you weren’t too busy here if you might accompany me to the Cathedral of Callus? I recall you asking to learn a little more about the Hexacost and I wanted to arrive before today’s afternoon service,”

“I should be finished up here in a moment or two,” she says, tapping her pencil against the cushiony surface of her lower lip. “Then I can pass over to Mordred to tie loose ends until I return,”

Darius nods, excusing himself, as he once more silently withdraws from the room with all the impermanence of a shadow receding.

Laila turns back to Mordred to fill his undead ears with fastidious minutiae of details for him to follow with double underlined notes before she departs to rejoin Darius’ company in the portrait hall.

She catches him observing the short line of his dead relations and the spot where his portrait now hung stoically among the rest. She can see him easily in the reflection of generations now withered to dust. The same deep olive skin, chiselled bone structure, hooked nose, and the _hunger_ in their eyes, the calculated menace of a born killer.

Yet she wonders sometimes if he still sees a forgery in himself, a lingering sense of unbelonging borne of how he had achieved his placement. Not in blood and bone as his father had wanted of him, but treachery and deceit. She understands very little of the nobility of combat that so plagued the creatures here. To her, blood was blood, what did it matter how it spilt? Whether at the end of a blade or congealed in the inner lining of one’s chest as a result of poison the wickedness done was the same in essence.

She sidles up to him in the same way he had done to her before and nets her hands over his eyes.

“You know I can smell you,” Darius says, his voice oozing with mirth “and hear you,”

She lowers her hands slips one in his as he turns to her. “Doesn’t mean that you can’t play along,”

He holds her hand almost like he doesn’t know how like he had never been seen such an appendage and couldn’t quite make sense of it. He strokes his thumb over the smooth beige skin of her backhand and rotates his fingers so they could connect with hers.

She understands a little better then, about the poison. She thinks perhaps it shakes them a little, these mighty and monstrous creatures, that for all their strength, speed and smarts that they could still end up laid out at mercy of someone who lacked for all those things, who just through a meagre disruption of their chemical makeup could alter them permanently.

He slides his hand away from hers. “I have the sleigh ready if you’d follow me,”

* * *

The cathedral is a dread-inspiring counterpart to the temples she knows back home, resplendent in sangrestone brick and flying buttresses with rose windows in stained glass. As she nears the entrance she can’t help but feel as though every frequency of atmospheric noise seemed to deaden into a comatose silence so that even to breathe too quick or too loud felt like a disturbance.

“Come on,”

Darius leads her past the threshold and onto the echoic floors of the halls that bridge into arches of rib vaults supported by thick, stolid pillars. Everywhere is carved and illustrated with symbolic icons and painted depictions that exude with such depraved essence that even she who is not so easily predisposed to shame cannot look upon them without feeling saturated in remorse.

Before the altar is a bronze relief that splays out before them, detailed even to the smallest of minutiae: An imposingly large bird with six heads outstretched from the confines of the plaque as though it was poised to fly out of it and sweep off the heads of its spectators with a sharp snap of its hooked talons. The chiselling of the wings was so intricate as to only be accomplished by enchanted tools which impressively capture at every dimension the texture of its mile-long feathers.

Laila traces the span of one with her finger and observes the iridescent shades of colour as she shifts to look at it from a different angle.

“The six-headed raptor is a common depiction of our god in Calanthic iconography,” explains Darius “it is meant to be a representation of the six facets that Calante embedded in us for our creation: Tenacity for longevity, Austerity for temperament, Ferocity for bloodthirst, Supremacy for power, Cunning for mind and Vigour for physique.”

She does not know much about Calantism besides what already happens to align with their own set of beliefs. The Goddess and God who bore a son the name of Calante was struck by wicked lust for the earth they created and so sought to enslave it until he was thwarted and imprisoned within Mount Malpurgo. The same volcano from which the Occassi would later allegedly emerge.

“So your god created you solely for the purpose that you would be cruel, bloodthirsty and vicious?”

Darius chuckles. “That's one way of interpreting it, others might say that he created the perfect predator, capable of withstanding anything,”

“I think I'm beginning to understand you all a little better now,”

“Legend has it that he captured these corrupted souls, daemons, who had been stewing in eternal misery in a vat of magma at the centre of the volcano, within six days he had taken them all and combined them and that is how we came into being,” Darius informs her “and that is why we celebrate the Hexacost, to remember our origins, six days of feasts and fighting,”

Laila snorts. “I didn’t think you needed an excuse for the latter,”

With such fondness, he looks at her then and though he tries hard to disguise it he can’t quite help the way it all just spills out of him, seeping out of all the places he forgets to keep neatly suppressed. “I suppose you’re right,”

From the altar he leads her out to the arcade with its pointed arches and left-leaning shadows, much of it had become tangled with brambles that never bear flower or fruit.

“Have you ever heard the myth of the midsummer fever?” she asks him when they stop to rest upon a stone bench. She throws up her legs behind her backside and nestles against the campfire heat of his body. “It is where the holiday of Lovers originated from. The legend dictates that only in the sultry heat of summer solstice when the sun has reached its zenith do passions and tempers rise to uncontainable levels and those who come under the spell of it would be struck by a frenzy where they desire nothing more than to shed their clothes and make insatiable love to their intended until sunset pausing only to feed them stone fruits by hand.”

“Sounds terribly exhausting,” Darius responds, his pupils having grown round and heavy as discs.

She smiles up at him, dimpling his shoulder with her chin. Contact was always the easiest route to persuasion. “I happen to find it one of my favourite holiday myths: the idea of being so overwhelmed by desire for something that you can’t get enough of it. Haven’t you ever wondered what that might feel like?”

She is sensuality embodied, her words hemmed with bobbin lace, the kind that only gets woven into intimates or bedclothes, that promises carnal things were about to happen in its presence. And within her voice, that same inferral.

His eyes grow dark and overcast. “I like desire just fine but overwhelming implies a lack of control on my part,”

She slides her arm up to knot her fingers through the fine hairs on the nape of his neck. “You can’t control everything though, can you? Especially not this,”

She slides her pointer over the slowly pulsing rhythm in his chest like she was making an incision.

There is a hitch of something, a pulse, a breath, something seismic in him that seizes and releases suddenly. “Laila,” he says, and she can feel the rumble of his chest beneath her. “I know what you’re up to,”

“And what am I up to?” she taunts, with her sticky-sweet cherry syrup lilt.

He slides away from her enough to loosen her grip and she lets her hand slump limply against the stone. “I know you and I have been intimate for some time now but I think it’s best for us both to practice discretion going forward,”

 _Oh_.

And just like that, she withdraws and her hands migrate from the bench onto her thighs. The sting of romantic rejection was still a foreign venom and therefore still potent. “By discretion, I take it to mean no intimacy at all,” she says, heat puddling to the front of her cheeks as regret at her earlier conduct begins to settle in. She swallows and her heart stutters. She shouldn’t have been so forthright, she shouldn’t have hoped his reciprocation would be an unspoken given.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales. “Mortos is in a fragile state politically and at the moment it requires for me to be immovable, unshakeable, I cannot allow any of my enemies to perceive me as being weak or that a Solarite is… influencing me,”

“I see,” she says, her face flushing and her heart bruised and already beginning to swell from the extent of the pummeling it had suffered. It was never supposed to really hurt, not this much, she had come to expect transience of every entanglement she had embarked upon. Nothing stayed, least of all her own emotions. Wasn’t that anchorless existence precisely her mother’s issue with her? So why it is this particular rejection struck through her like lightning?

She swings her legs to touch down upon the grass and lets her feet take her the rest of the way towards the cathedral.

“Please don’t walk away,” Darius implores.

But she knows if she stops she will detonate with all the messy tangle of anger and embarrassment and rejection that she feels. So she keeps walking.

But he does not stop following almost as though he cannot help himself but to trail after her as though she had strung him up like a marionette. “This doesn’t change the way that I feel about you but surely you can understand just how damaging a sexual relationship could bear upon you let alone just me,”

Somehow his attempts to absolve and pat his conscience dry of any wrongdoing was too much for her so she pivots on her heel and halts him with her liquefying stare. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him once flinch before that moment in all his glacial impassivity but her rage is equatorial.

“Stop acting like this is about anything other than you and your ego and your pathetic Occassi complex with the idea that you might be laid low by a Solarite,” she hisses, attempting painfully to control her shrill pitch and heightened volume. “I am not some malevolent force sent here by my mother to mistreat and oppress you, and I apologise if those who came before me had left you with that impression but I respect myself too much to stand here and let you rationalise away the fact that you are hurting me, Darius,”

He lowers his eyes, remorseful, then in haste parts his lips to speak.

“Don’t,” she says, for she knew exactly the kind of web-spinning his words will lead. “If you start talking right now I fear I might start screaming and then I will never stop. Just leave me _be_ , Darius, you have made your point quite clear,”

Before he can even think to edge in another word, a mere syllable, she generates a portal and steps through it in an instant letting it transport her back within the safe confines of her manor.


	17. Nescience

Burnt honey billows like a cloud in her poppy milk as Echo stirs her ornamental teaspoon carefully within the walls of a dainty painted cup. An invitation to the tea rooms of Domitia Orlovis were sacred occasions that were as chastely guarded as one’s underskirts.

These heavily decorated alcoves were sanctuaries, places of refuge, where one could loosen their lips as well as their guards and all amongst the safety of their fellow Occasselle for no male would be granted entry past the threshold.

Today’s topic of interest was currently parading itself around the gathering table as the ladies took turns manoeuvring the pretty emerald box, unclasping its seal to watch the lively ascent of a paper bird relaying the invite to the upcoming masked ball hosted by Princess Laila before swooping back inside to safety.

“Well, I assume that we are all going,” announces Domitia in that graceful, stately way she often does when making proclamations rather than requests.

“Oh yes, we all received one,” Isabella Levantis says as she lifts her tea to take a modest sip. As she sets down her cup Echo catches the sway of her engagement amulet, the oval disc of black onyx that is studded with a pupil of moonstone. The Eye of Confirmation. They say it started as a warning to other Occassi, a display of pending purchase: this one is now currently under his eye. “And I don’t know about you but I’m rather curious to see what sort of event the Solarite will conjure,”

“Well if it’s anything like her dresses it ought to be an obscenity I’m sure,” Sabina snorts dismissively and then blinks suddenly in defence when a discomforted gaze is aimed her way. “Have you _seen_ her outfits? I know that it is the summer but surely if you’re going to parade around half-dressed you may as well do away with the needless provocation and just go out bare. Imagine if one of us ever went outside like that, we’d be- well, it doesn’t bear saying,”

They all understand well enough, one of those subliminal messages that are transmitted through shared glance and awareness. Her father had shown her once, what the penalty had been for being deemed too unruly. The gap-toothed smiles and raw finger stumps that still blemished the bodies of some in this very room, though they now subconsciously sought to conceal them. Their existence remains a warning, a breathing relic of a now reluctantly forbidden punishment.

Only good wives and daughters got to keep the use of their claws and fangs, their god-given arsenal. So keep them nice and sheathed and don't talk too out of turn to the one who fills your bowl and tightens your leash lest you find yourself disarmed too.

Echo recalls another time in the tea room before this one when Sabina had snuck in some avitae to spike her tea and became even more generous with her audacious outbursts: _Sometimes I tend to wonder why it is we never really keep any pets. And then it occurred to me. We’re the pets._

 _We’re the pets_. Something about that one always stuck with her.

“Father did allow me to purchase this absolutely beautiful dress made of lilac petals recently,” Isabella says “an authentic Aurora Golde too and it’s not too revealing. I am hoping he’ll let me wear it to the ball,”

Talk of dresses only serves to remind her of the rose-velvet frock her father had presented for her to wear during the upcoming meeting with the rex. It is the colour of the deepest of wines and boasts a voluminous skirt with black cobweb netting and a matching cloak studded with black diamonds in the arrangement of roses. Before the purchase, her father bade her put it on for him so that the seamstress could take the final measuring adjustments but all he had done is lament her waifish hips and stunted development and prayed the regent make do.

“I suppose now you will have to request secondary approval from your betrothed,” Domitia points out, cutting herself a neat slice of black forest cake.

Isabella visibly deflates somewhat at that which prompts Echo to speak. “I’m sure he’ll accept and that you’ll look wonderful in it, Bella,”

To see the swell of good humour return to her is reward enough.

“Oh, _please_ ,” huffs Sabina, having folded the daily newspaper and shoved it away in disgust.

Echo catches it before it manages to flutter off the edge of the table and take flight like a new bird from its nest who had strongly underestimated the magnetic drag of gravity. She flattens it out with a noisy whack in mid-air to peruse the front page and its grainy animated photograph which depicted none other than the crown princess herself standing by a wall of fruit which she appears to have infused with solar energy until the bushes were heavy laden.

“Just look at her, how saccharine she is,” Sabina is still spewing like she’d caught a mouthful of foul-tasting medicine but look Echo does, surveying intently her light-bulb bright locks tucked away inside a ribbon, her filthy hands, the charming crinkles that appear in her eyes as she smiles.

“I wonder how much power that took out of her,” Echo observes, having known little of Solarite nature only in that it was naturally opposed to their own. They were beings of pure ether, the same element that composes that of the heavens themselves and thus from within them they create light, life, _energy_ but all of that expenditure had to be debited from somewhere. She skips to the page of the main article. “Seems she’s searching for a way to improve our farming techniques,”

“I wonder what Serafina Blackwood and the Vidua Nocte would have to say about that,” Sabina snorts into her tea “far less of an excuse for them to murder babies and gut livestock then,”

“Not that there ever was an excuse, far as those hags are concerned,” Domitia sighs heavily, “but I fear they’re too powerful for even the crown to challenge, not that Lanius Rex was willing to do anything against them and Darius, well, as Calante would have it in yet another one of his cruel jests: Serafina is his mother,”

“Ugh if it is a contest between those loathsome creatures and the Solarite, I fear that Calante has made his best quip yet,” Sabina says, and with a touch too much force slams her cup down until it crackles.

“Sabina!” Domitia chastises, and like a shockwave, it makes rigid the spines of all the youngers in the room.

No one dares move or breathe, least of all the culprit that broke the tentatively held assurance that refuge from the world of the Occassi there will be so long as you remember it was Domitia’s dominion you adhered to instead.

Before the younger of the two has the chance to atone for her misgiving, to plead forgiveness, the matriarch has already peeled off her delicate lace gloves.

“You know the penalty, Sabina,” and it is with such a sad little sigh she tells her as she locks her fingers and flexes them out. “Fingers,”

Sabina makes a soft, plaintive whine as every bit of her face seems to helplessly fold in on itself but submit her hand she does, every smooth vanilla digit with its curved nail still perfectly buffed and lacquered in Poison Berry shade. They seem so frail, the skin pulled taut over bone with not so much as an inch of fat.

It always hurts her more than it hurts them, that’s what she always insisted as she curls one digit around Sabina’s own and bends it until it breaks. Echo will never forget that sound. The crackle like dried twigs snapping and its echoing cry that enthrals her ears to the root of the violence as her sight is similarly coerced with perverse interest, pinned to a scene that she can’t turn away from.

With each methodical fracture, she feels her morbid curiosity escalate as her own fingers reflexively curl into the tablecloth until she realises her nails are audibly grazing the fabric. She releases.

Sabina’s fingers had curved so backwards they were practically touching her wrist which her immortal body slowly knits back together with pained gasps.

“You know I don’t like having to do that to you girls,” Domitia tuts as just as daintily she rolls the lace of her gloves all the way down to the frilled hem at the wrist. “But remember, all that I do to you I do with love. This is a cursed world and we are daemons, if you can’t learn to take a lashing or two from me you can forget about ever making it through your marriages,”

Echo shakily puts her cup down, the enchantment now broken, and withdraws her napkin from her lap. “I think it’s time… it’s time for my father to pick me up now,”

It takes every bit of willpower to suppress her muscles from speeding out of the area at the height of her enhanced velocity as she curtseys and hurried makes her way out of the tearoom.

* * *

That evening Echo keeps her fingers interlocked in the poofy skirt of her lap as Ravenna hovers about her with a gnat-like persistence that just _ached_ to be swatted. The bony, knobbled fingers of her nursemaid pinch the pearl handle of the squirrel-haired brush with precision as she adds delicate touches to enhance the final details of her masterpiece.

Her face is the canvas concealed beneath several luminescent veils of blanching powder. Her small, well-shaped mouth is enamelled with oxblood rouge and her soft, round apple cheeks are dusted with more of the same. Her eyes, widely set and angular as a feline’s, are outlined in a smoky neutral shadow and rimmed with kohl. Even her nails had been filed to a point and glossed in a coating of black lacquer.

“You’ve let her hair grow too long, Ravenna,” tuts her father, as he flicks open a monogrammed lighter to kindle his cigarette. “Do whatever sorcery you must to deal with it for the time being but we’ll have to get it cut,”

The ghoul nods diligently as she slides in several spindly pins to restrain her hair.

Echo hisses as they prod callously against the vulnerable skin of her scalp and with each minute movement of her hair they scrabble just as errantly so that no patch remains unmolested.

Her father takes a contemplative drag of his cigarette, puffing like a chimney. “I suppose it’ll have to do, won’t it, Echo? Come along now,”

Eager to shift her aching rear from the vanity seat, she makes her bid to escape but not before Ravenna gives her two indulgent puffs of cloying perfume which disperse into her open nostrils causing her to wheeze.

“You have a good night now, my commander! Mistress!” the corpse croons insipidly as the bedroom door creaks closed upon her.

Augustus sets his hand upon Echo’s shoulder as they walk down the stairs and he drapes her cloak across her shoulders, clipping it shut. “Now remember, Echo, you must do as I instruct. Do not speak unless the rex poses a question towards you directly or I motion you to speak and try to keep that smart tongue tied,”

She sets her marshmallow jaw so firmly she feels as though she might crack her teeth. “Yes, Father,”

They cross the threshold of the house to enter the motor carriage that awaits them which glides in a neat trajectory towards the Malborg Keep and its infamous bronze gates.

Echo fiddles nervously with her underskirt all the while, for though she had touched foot on castle ground many a time before now this recent excursion held a sense of foreboding within it.

“This meeting will be essential to your future,” her father had repeated just before the carriage reaches the courtyard and another ghoul by the name of Mordred arrives to greet them.

“His Highness awaits you in the Audience Room,” the ghoul rasps and as is custom he escorts them to the residential tower of the castle and into the chamber itself with its lacquered walls in regal indigo like the unfiltered ink of a cephalopod hollow suckering in all the light and in the centre— a throne of polished ivory bone propped up by preserved skulls.

The rex sits atop his throne while his crown nestles atop him—a domed silhouette split into two hemispheres like a cracked skull with a sanguineous velvet cap in the centre. It is encrusted with innumerable black diamonds, white diamonds and rubies and rests upon a circlet of antlers while arched in the centre of the great wound is a bridge of diamonds-encrusted eagle skulls topped by a large red spinel.

He looks the same as always, of course, tall and built with a rugged brickwork of a body and features that were cut like a diamond. His eyes hold a piercing, frigid quality, like being submerged naked within the pellucid waters of a lagoon. They seem to scan restlessly around the room.

Mordred projects his proclamation: “Announcing the arrival of Augustus Corvicius Veritis, Legatus of Skarlvilė and his daughter Echo Augusticia Vertis, Domina of Skarlvilė,”

Her father bows whilst Echo curtseys so deeply she is practically seated in mid-air.

“Welcome, Praefect Augustus and Echo Domina, please rise,”

They do as he says.

“For what purpose have you called this audience,”

Augustus takes a step forward. “Your Highness, my daughter Echo is now one and twenty, an Occasselle grown of marriageable age, I have come to make an offering of her hand should her presentation please you,”

Darius descends from the throne as the length of his cloak laps against the steps like a black wave.

This is the part that her father had rehearsed her for, where her suitor would remove her cloak to gaze upon her for inspection. She keeps her spine very rigid as Darius approaches her and reaches first for the hood that hides her hair and peels it back.

It does not matter whether he had already gazed upon her before this moment, of course, the tradition was in the principle of the novelty of assessment where a lady who might once have only been glanced at was now truly _seen._

She stops her breath as he reaches for the brooch now and unclips it to reveal her thick rose-velvet frock, vibrantly red against her pale skin for no better does blood appear than upon the blank canvas of snow.

He neatly folds her cape to one side and hands it to her father to take. “Turn around,”

She does one slow rotation as Darius smothers his lips with a fist.

“She is slender but functional,” her father interjects “she shouldn’t have an issue with childbearing more than the usual trials of course and her power…” her father’s voice dips as though he has spoken something illicit. “Should make for rather outstanding offspring should they live,”

“And the hybridism?” Darius asks, with a questioning glance towards Augustus. “Have you made certain that will not present any challenges?”

She had anticipated that of course and though her tongue is firmly pinned she feels a flicker of irritation at being spoken about as though she were insentient.

“Ah, well, these things can only be truly understood through trial and error, you understand,” Augustus emits a wry chuckle “if she is to be found barren then, of course, you may annul,”

Darius’ eyes flick over to Echo. “I would like to consult with Echo for her thoughts, Augustus,”

“Of course,” her father accepts without question.

“Alone,”

Her father bristles in defence, a web of blackness formulating over the whites of his eyes. How quickly they degrade into their primal instincts when they perceive a threat.

“Try not to look so stern, Augustus,” Darius reassures him with a good-humoured grip of the shoulder. His voice was smooth as ironed silk. “I don’t intend to do anything indecent,”

Her father swallows, the thick swell of his throat-apple bobbing as he suppresses politely the burgeoning of a growl that perches from within. “I’ll be in the Portrait Hall,” he declares as he makes his reluctant departure from the room.

Echo straightens out an imaginary crease in her frock.

Darius smiles amiably at her. “Do take a seat, I feel as though talks like these are best had over a nice brandy.” He curves a hand behind the small of her back and coaxes her onto the nearby seating area where her toes scuff a 4th-century Seraji rug before she is pressed onto cushioned silk. “Mordred, fetch the bottled 928 Orille,”

He makes a gesture only his servant could decipher as the ghoul hurries to complete his task.

“So, let us be candid,” Darius says, falling into a leonine repose in his seat as he props one polished patent leather brogue atop his knee. “Now I must confess I did fib a little to your father out there Echo, I do intend on asking you a question that is rather indecent,”

Echo inhales sharply, asphyxiating on air, knowing what little her paltry handful of years had to offer in terms of indecency.

Mordred soon returns with the vintage brandy and bloated snifters which he arranges neatly on a tray before them and adds blocks of ice into a glass for Darius.

“Ah, my manners,” Darius exclaims, he snaps his fingers and points. “Would you like ice?”

She shakes her head.

Mordred fills both glasses as the ice clinks and crackles from contact with the liquor. He hands them both their glasses and bows in dismissal.

“So your father tells me that you are pristine, I assume that means you’ve never had intercourse,”

Echo having already swallowed a gulpful of brandy feels the sudden tickle of undiluted spirit and splutters softly. “No,” she exclaims, offended.

Darius swirls his snifter, unperturbed. “What about kissing?”

Her cheeks aflame, she takes a more conservative sip from her glass. “My priest says that Occassi would prefer us not to, that our abstinence only reinforces our strength of character and resilience which will prepare us for the trials of childbed,”

Suddenly, Darius begins to chuckle which he quickly suppresses into a sip when he sees the look of ire on her face. “You are so young,”

She bristles at the insinuation.

“Please do not take it as an offence, my lady, I remember being your age very well though it was some centuries ago now, I was preparing to enter my first rites in the wilderness.” This, of course, was a fundamental rite of passage for boy-cubs to be seen as Occassi grown “after that, I studied a lot, travelled some, fought many battles, immersed myself in biological engineering and took a lot of lovers along the way,”

He takes a sip and she mirrors him, now filled with the incomprehensible sense of inadequacy, of a need to impress him. She had never before considered just how insufficient she would appear to in all her insipid infancy to the world, her scarce monotony of experience. What had she to offer this creature whose experiences could fill textbooks and erect museums, who was unto himself a corporeal monument of history?

“Now you, I suppose, are entering the world in a very exciting time Echo. Before you would’ve spent these past centuries confined to the house attempting to produce heir after heir, managing the household duties and keeping the finances balanced, taking up a hobby or twelve, dedicating to the faith, setting up new trends of fashion. Yet now, you could go to university if you wanted, travel the world, maybe even start a business,”

She shrugs, not knowing what else to say for that is all she knew of how her world functioned. There have been many avenues for Occasselle to alleviate boredom should it come to it. Art and literature, tutoring of the young, it has never occurred to her to balance the scale of opportunity between that of her and her predecessors. For her, there had been no choice, only what had been selected for her.

“My father says that once I produce an heir I can do whatever I desire.” It was an implicit rule, unspoken and yet inferred. “A lot of Occasselle my age hear that from their fathers. That, of course, we will have _years_ to pursue our dreams with the full economic support of our husbands once we fulfil our duty. We took to calling it our very own First Rite to full citizenship: produce the next generation of warriors and workers, nurture them to full growth and your life may yet become your own. Until the next of course, everyone needs a spare after all who knows what will happen, and the next after that-”

Darius sets his snifter on his knee. “Why do you want to become queen, Echo?”

She glances, reflexively, towards the closed door. “To get away from him,”

“Why else?”

She moistens her lips. “For power,”

“That’s the thing we all want, isn’t it? Power, the fundamental thing that sets the predator apart from the prey.” He drains his glass dry. “How have your nights been, Echo? Been receiving any more dreams recently?”

“A few,” she admits and thinks back to the vision she had conjured of the doe-eyed girl and her quaint little cottage house. “I saw a magi in Thalistan with Dominus,”

His eyes are alight with interest. “Well don’t keep me in suspense, did you at least procure a name? A face?”

She feels a little flicker come to her lips, something sly and vulpine. “My father told me that I shouldn’t discuss my powers with you when he is not present,” she says, rolling the snifter around in her grip. “He seems to think that you will take advantage,”

“Ah, is that so?” Darius says, and he sets his empty glass onto the tray. “Thank you for talking with me, Echo, it’s been very enlightening. Now, I’m going to call in your father and tell him what a nice, proper chat we just had and that I have something that I would like to discuss with him,”

She stares at him, suddenly defiant. “Like what?”

Now he smiles and knots his fingers together. “There are things I can offer you that are far superior to marriage, Echo. Things such as true power, just as you always desired. But I have my part to play and so do you. Let’s not spoil the show for them,”

The thought of receiving power without marriage was too utopian for her to fathom. So she dared not fathom it even as he makes a gesture to his manservant to escort her from the room and retrieve his father from the Portrait Hall in her stead.

“Well?” Augustus asks brusquely.

“His Highness would like to speak with you,” the ghoul rasps.

Echo keeps her eyes downcast and fingers busy at her crinoline.

“Hmph,” Augusts snorts, his expression darkening considerably. “You wait here girl but you’d better hope it’s good news otherwise I might be inclined to think it was something you said,”

He disappears down the hallway before she can even think to protest her innocence.

* * *

Echo scales the hall as she waits and observes the geometric shadows cast by the arched windows, lambent as they were by the ferocity of the red skyline and the moon’s solitary pockmarked eye.

The eyes of the portraits stalk her from one end to the other, the kings on one side of the wall with their queens hanging opposite. The portraits were colossal in their brass frames, further magnified in contrast to Echo’s paltry size in comparison.

She stops before the porcelain visage of Vasilia, as doomed as she was lovely. At least that is how many of the tales were woven about her before her untimely death at the hands of assassins meant for her husband. But prior to her premature fate, she was everything that a queen was meant to be; the incarnate of the goddess Anara before her almighty fall. Vasilia was docile. Vasilia was a mother. And then she died.

There are several more tales like that about queens, these hollow painted husks, like vases, sitting pretty for things to be planted inside of them. Echo prefers other tales like the one of Narcissa who warded off the siege of Qarnun armies upon Gravissia with her other ladies. Even as she was caught and tortured she never once broke and that is what elevated her in the minds of many when they dare revere her name. Not that she was strong but that she was durable, made even more resilient by the fact that she suffered.

She glances to the empty space beside Vasilia that is sure to be filled. By some other vase if not her. She lets her hand hover over the empty space and suddenly, flitting into the view with the beat of a bird wing, she sees the image of summer-hued shoulders obscured by a cascade of gold ringlets before it is gone again. She tries to grasp what she had seen, retrieve it when the heavy footfalls of her father interrupt any chances she has at regaining focus.

She pivots towards him in brace for his words, recognising that familiar lugubrious air to his face.

“His Highness appears to believe that you are too young for marriage yet have some hidden potential that I have been neglecting,” he informs her, his throat bobbling with a swallow. “He, therefore, has _heavily_ suggested that I turn over your tutelage to him from here on for the good of the kingdom,”

She says nothing to how little he appears to want to agree to it but knows that it would not have mattered in any case. No one would refuse a direct order from the rex.

“What does that mean for me?” she asks.

“You are to take up temporary residence in the castle and your powers will be honed for royal duty,”

Her surprise makes itself known with every forceful drumbeat of a pulse. “I will no longer live at home?”

He shakes his head gravely. “This is not quite what I desired for you Echo but you still have a chance yet while you’re at court. Stay close to him, study him, we may yet have our hopes for power realised.”

“Yes, Father,” she says, meek as always. Though beyond her initial acquiescence is her fear that her jailer may have traded her shackles to a far more formidable master. She did not doubt the rex wanted something from her even if it was not her body and the prospect of him possessing her mind and her power was something not to be easily disregarded. “I will do my best to ensure our success,”


	18. Annihilation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to thank voxel for letting me borrow Frankie for a birthday cameo. It was fun to reimagine her in my world and I hope I do her justice. <3

Into the jaws of death, they run, these beasts with their battle-weary bodies.

They pulverise this field beneath their boots with its oppressive fog and ice-brittle shards of grass, their swords extended like an additional claw, shields like a beetle-bug carapace and truly what _need_ have they of such mortal instruments with the talons so beautifully carved to mangle and the fangs with enough density to powder bone?

But the length, the endurance and the odious curses scribbled in ancient markings along the facade of the blade will soon enhance its utility as with one powerful overhead swipe he slices the Seraji soldier from shoulder to waist and watches the top layer slither flimsily off from the rest of him and dismembers the squealing firearm for collection.

So feeble were these mortal men with their matchstick bodies quivering in their little rabbit trench-holes and yet more they kept coming with their spewing firedrakes. They overwhelm him like a colony of black sugar ants as he flings them to the ground, watching their bodies shatter on the brittle grass as they smear beetroot blood into the sleet.

Though for each expiry another does another manifest to replace it until eventually, his body surrenders to exhaustion as they prostrate him on the grass, his limbs now limply submissive beneath the combined feather-weights of their bodies, crushing him down like a boulder.

He could only lie in wait as he hears the fateful crunch of boots on the ground and the executioner’s loom of the black hooded figure as he unsheathes himself to reveal his brother’s face.

And once more does his overactive mind will his sedated limbs to action but the soldiers holding him don’t even ripple. Not even as he gasps out and pleas and bargains with every scrap of vulnerability that his father had not yet gutted from him. They didn’t let him go.

 _Brother._ He rasps out in seek of the connection that perhaps over the centuries had always been stretched taut from their father’s best efforts to pry it in two but they’d always snapped back with the resilience of elastic in the end, hadn’t they? Surely he could not loathe him so much as to not give him- _Mercy. Please._

Darius smiles at him and in the place of ivory teeth were the jagged spikes of setâre wood. Then he lunges.

Dominus leaps up with a start, his fangs dropped and his claws protruded as he makes a whip-like slash with his arm to the empty air within reach. He does not settle even when the night-ghast slowly retracts its grip from his mind. Instead, he leaps up and paces a few perfect circles in the ground, tightens a fist and pummels a hole through plaster to brick before he steps back and clutches his head.

“What in oblivion is wrong with me?” he snarls and tugs as though it might tear his cranium apart so that he might reform the contents into something that resembled normal function. He could not _break_ not now, he must be solid, immovable oak, but it was so difficult being the whittled wooden soldier his father made of him when he wasn’t there to wind his key and watch him go. Where was he to direct all this infinite, bottomless will without a firm hand to take him by the shoulder and pivot the way?

His chest tremors as he steadies his breaths and eventually he returns to that blank slate of numbness that he so needed and he bumbles his way towards the passageway and gropes for the toggle light switch.

He hisses like an animal when the light punctures his vision as he palms the hand-painted wallpaper all the way into the bathroom. The porcelain tiles are cold beneath his calloused feet as he turns on the tap, switches the thermostat to high temperature and allows the condensation to fog the room like the mists that often carpeted the forests in glistening winter mornings, like something that almost brings him close to home.

He thinks of the steam-baths and hot springs of the training academy in his youth with the sort of volcanic heat that always leaves you clean and stripped and he feels that tight constriction in his chest again followed by an ache between his shoulder blades. He can’t think of it. Of home. He can’t allow his mind to unmoor itself through excess of wanting.

So he steps into the shower and he lets the first needles of scalding water slither through the jungly mane of his hair and through the crisp strands of his beard. He rinses beneath his chin and hears the audible rustle of his fingers. He needs a trim badly and his hair has gotten similarly unruly when it is not lazily half-knotted at his head.

Back in Mortos, they might have sheared it off out of practicality and as a deterrent to pests but out in the forests all these decades personal grooming merely became another luxury he’d been forced to forfeit. He wonders what his mother would have thought of it, his mother with her immaculate curls carefully arranged beneath her coronal headdress and her enamelled carmine lips that were always prettily parted in unspoken disapproval when he trekked mud in from the stables. He remembers the very last time he’d seen those lips—dry and chapped around the mouth like peeled paint. Stiff, never to move again.

Now his mother, she was best known for her vivid autumnal locks which she liked to wear loose during intimate settings in their natural ringlets down to her waist—like rivulets of fresh blood. This earned her the moniker of Bleeding Heart by his father and later among the nobility, not only for her hair colour but also for her tender and true heart which almost felt unfitting for that of an Occassi.

She had been unfitting, perhaps the only one of their family to know what it meant to have hands that are spotless. And the Solarites, they had her murdered. Brutalised. That he could not forgive.

That’s the thing about hate for him. It erodes him like water against rock, numbs the nerve ends to any rejuvenating sparks that might take its place and make him feel anything other than this necrotic wound in the alcove of his stomach. And he wonders sometimes if that was what she had felt watching the amaranthum eat away her insides and liquidize her organs; if it all just culminated into this one big aerating hollow inside of her that couldn’t keep anything in but couldn’t let anything out.

He digs inside the soap holder for the strong-smelling yellow bar that practically melts like butter in his fingers. He smears it over his body until his skin felt slippery and smooth and reeked of coconut. He rinses again and swivels the taps until they shut off with a squeak.

He peels back the shower curtain and reaches for a gaudy-patterned towel which he ties into a knot around his waist. The water was still sitting atop his hair like a jellied layer like it was too dense for it to seep through. He squeezes it dry in the sink and tames it further with a comb, then he steps into the hallway.

The first door he pushes through ends up being a pastel-coloured child’s room with twin beds and matching baby blue quilts. It was guarded by an army of stuffed animals whose beady button eyes seemed omniscient. Hammered across one side of the wall were the mounts of fish skeletons all varied in length and width, their mouths still full of a myriad of little needle teeth. Then on the other end in an orderly formation behind polished glass cabinet doors are wooden animal figurines still smooth with resin. He can view the steady progression of skill and dexterity in the crafter’s fingers as the shelves evolve upwards in detail and complexity from the clumsier carvings of before.

He approaches the desk by the cabinet, drawn in by the handmade photo frame that was just a little bit crooked to eyes as superior as his own. There he sees a young Ellena and an impish faced creature he took to be her sister, their faces creased in mirth as they knelt before a melting sandcastle.

He slips the photo from the frame and presses his thumb against it almost as though he thought the memory might absorb him into it. He can envision them so clearly padding barefoot in the shallows of the sea, a fishing rod slung across the shoulder of the sister as she hauls in catches that eclipse her size by two-fold.

Then her and Ellena sculpting a citadel out of wet sand, their shrill little girl laughter dampening the air as the tide rolls in to demolish it while Sadik hurriedly fiddles with a camera to immortalise this moment. He finds himself in envy of these mortals and their untainted child's play and how this sepia-toned film is roseate with the warmth of their father's love that he offers them without penalty.

When he was just a boy-cub his king father had stomped his spine into ten imperfect fragments and forced him to heal them together. Then he did it again and again until he was able to repair it without so much as a whimper. That was love in the way of the Occassi, that was _family_. It wasn't soft ice-cream summers and building wet sandcastles by the beach, it was allowing someone close enough to decimate you and only hoping that, by the strength of their mercy or your own resolve, they wouldn't.

A door slams in the distance and with tense fingers Dominus slides the photo back into the frame and speeds into the spare bedroom.

Sadik's footsteps are loud and forceful on the staircase as he enters with a monogrammed tote slung over the crook of his elbow. “I brought you a fresh set of clothes,” he declares as he flings the bag onto the bed. “Don't much fancy your chances of fitting inside any of mine and you could do with a new set,”

Dominus takes a quick glance at Sadik and concludes his assumption as correct. He was not a small man by any means but Dominus eclipsed him by at least five inches and he was trim in figure where Dominus is broad and gargantuan, a magnified presence in this little anthill room.

He tips the bag on the bed and empties it to reveal a black silk shirt with Thalit embroidery and cream trousers. There were even underclothes and velvet slippers that were similarly decorous. He notices how the people here favoured bold, vivacious embellishments and saturated colours that scream in his face when he sees them.

He shrugs off his towel, uncaring of his modesty and slides on the loose cotton drawers and trousers and shimmies the long silk shirt past his shoulders. It reaches his knees once he tugs it down enough.

“If you'd like I can take you somewhere to get that beard of yours a trim, maybe even sort out that rat's nest you call hair,” Sadik mentions idly having now made himself comfortable in an armchair. He is heavy in his ostentation with his many-ringed fingers, his double-pierced helix and his coal-black eyes immaculately shaped by gold pencil.

Dominus grunts uncharitably. “What's wrong with how I look?”

Sadik raises a groomed brow at him and for a moment he sees Darius in his place, fingers tented, always appraising his unconventional technique at lacing his kaftan. _The clothes maketh the creature, Dominus_. But he is no prince any longer, he needn't laud his superior birth over his lessers though he misses the weight given from the pelts of dead prehistoric beasts on his back.

“It's simpler to evade detection whilst I remain ungroomed,”

“Perhaps out in the jungle but here you blend by giving no one any reason to doubt your belonging in the first place,” Sadik tells him “you are not quite as dark as the people here but you are certainly not as pale as a light-skinned Mortesian so consider presenting yourself as a resident and stop murdering people. You'd be surprised how inconspicuous you can seem,”

Dominus’ throat gives another rumble as he sits on the bed and forms a concave in the mattress. “If you are quite finished mocking me I would like to know of my next orders,”

“Your orders are to join me for breakfast, I know a little place, subtle, good food, then we’ll meet a friend of mine who will aid your task,”

He stands and taps Dominus on the side of his arm, almost fatherly, but all his muscles can remember is the threat of harm and so he tenses and his fingers curve into a position to strike before he lets the impulse pass.

“I see,” Sadik says, having noticed his reaction. Then he raises his hands. “No touching then, come along monster,”

He walks out of the room. Dominus follows.

* * *

Sadik drives them to a busy cafe on the edge of town. An emerald dove scavenges crumbs from the earthen floor with a determinedly bobbing head as ceiling fans slice through a thick smog of humidity in a continuous hum over crowded, chattering tables.

Once seated, Sadik orders them rice and black lentil pancakes stuffed with spiced potatoes on plates of banana leaf. The meal is paired with little silver bowls of chutney and tall glasses of spiced tea which Sadik sips from first before carefully tearing portions from his pancake and dipping it in chutney.

Dominus eats ravenously with the appetite of a monster. He never realised how hard a real meal would hit him after years of squealing baby birds and carrion. When he finishes his first meal he orders an additional helping of rice pudding smothered with brown sugar and banana.

“You can eat, can't you,” Sadik observes in an amalgam of wary and amusement.

Dominus nods vigorously and takes a sip of Seraji coffee which he had ordered with his second course. The flavour is smooth and earthy with traces of cardamom and tobacco concealed within the brew. “You mentioned we are to be expecting company,” he says as he slurps at the last dregs of the beverage and just about refrains from licking the sludge that remains at the bottom of the cup.

“Indeed.” Sadik nods towards the opening door. “There she is now,”

Their company, as it so happens, comes trudging inside the cafe with a soldier’s resolve, sending the pigeon flying in a nervous scramble. Certainly, she looked the part of a warrior with the sort of simmering furnace energy that could only belong to that of a Seraji. Dominus had known that fire well enough, been burnt by it.

The magi approaches their table with arms locked and a dark glint in her eyes that reflected her distaste. “Caught a glimpse of your little friend over there by the window,” she declares, gesturing to Dominus with all the dismissal of addressing an inanimate object she was displeased with receiving. “I assume this is him, then?”

Sadik leans back into his chair with ease. “Pull up a chair, Francine, order yourself a coffee. This might take a while,”

The magi now granted the name of Francine crinkles her nose but does as he asks all the same. They were familiar with one another then and from the looks of her—long red robe with black stitching and a pointed baggy hood—she was an investigator of some sorts. He’d dodged many in his time on the run.

“Meet Dom, he’ll be your own personal muscle that you requested for the rest of the investigation. Dom, this is Francine Harjo, we go back some and I hired her personally to look into the mundane disappearances,”

“So what’s your story, big guy?” Francine inquires as she turns her scrutinising dark stare towards Dominus.

Unaccustomed as he is to falsities he is unable to muster anything other than the obvious. “I owe Sadik a debt in return for a vessel back to Mortos, as an Occassi my services should come of great benefit,”

Her expression migrates from shock to doubt to anger within the fragment of a second. “What in oblivion is this, Sadik?”

Sadik merely takes a quick sip from his tea. “You asked me to offer you back-up, Francine, this is your back-up,”

“I asked for a little more security not for you to assign a fucking monster to my tail,”

“Francine, Francine, now is that any way to treat my new friend here?” Sadik clicks his tongue in paternal disapproval and gestures towards him. “He’s harmless enough,”

“Didn’t seem too harmless when he was tearing up the Tiger’s Eye the other night,” Francine huffs “that is if that’s him or have you gotten in the habit of picking up strays?”

“So he has a few temper tantrums here and there, it’s nothing you can’t handle, just keep him well-fed and watered and he won’t be a bother,”

“I’ll do more than that,” Francine warns “he takes a step out of line and I’ll light him up, like that.” She snaps her fingers and a flame ignites on the edge of her thumb.

Dominus lets his fangs scrape the edge of his bottom lip in warning. “I wouldn’t suggest making the mistake of administering threats that you cannot uphold, Francine Harjo,”

She looks at him in earnest for the first time, this barely-woman who couldn’t be more than a fraction of his size much less his weight and her brows raise in provocation and he sees that this one has the beast in her even if she hadn’t the claws and teeth to bear as her own.

Sadik wraps his knuckles on the table. “Now, now, there’ll be none of that. You two play nice and Francine will catch you up to speed, breakfast is my treat.” He stands and retrieves his wallet and rifles through it to retrieve corona—gold-rimmed coins of rose quartz—and sets a generous pile of them on the table.

“And where are you going?” Francine demands to know.

Sadik presents his commercial-ready smile. His teeth are near offensively white against his obsidian skin. “I have a business to run if you recall, I trust you to take it from here. Contact me if you need anything.”

He pockets his hands and departs from the cafe with a jaunty spring in his step.

Francine looks at Dominus. Dominus looks back. “I assume that Sadik has informed you of the bare bones of the investigation,”

He nods. Thirty-one missing mundanes, Sadik had said. All of them stolen in the stiff rigor mortis of the night when all things ceased to be only to be taken… somewhere. The first and most obvious thought was that they were removing them for extermination. But it didn’t make much sense that they would go to the pains to ferret them off in small numbers when they could simply ransack entire villages and raze them to the ground. It was why he did not simply dare to take on Soleterea single-handed, they were formidable enough to be able to withstand him alone and their support was too great. So there had to be another end to these abductions, though what that was he couldn’t yet say.

“I’ve been on the case a couple of weeks at most, biggest pain in my neck I ever had the misfortune to take on,” she declares “see, it’s very rare that people just up and vanish even in a mystical land like ours. But these people?” She snaps her fingers and this time no flame appears. “So I start doing some digging, interviewing families, retracing victim’s last steps, that sort of deal. I manage to start discovering a pattern that the only ones being snatched are in their prime. No children or elderly.”

Dominus furrows his brow. “We have mortals in Mortos and it is the prime who encompass the majority of our peasantry. We work them until they die and then we animate the bodies to keep them working, sparing only a few to live in comfort to ensure they keep producing the next generation. Why then would anyone wish to dispose of the only valuable bodies of the population?”

“I asked myself something similar though we aren’t quite as barbarous here.” She gives him a pointed look. “I managed to get into contact with someone who noticed something on the night one went missing. He said ‘they came with white cloaks and gold roses’ I couldn’t receive anything more lucid than that since he was already half out of his mind when I got to him. He hung himself in the forest not long after and shortly after that my motor carriage spontaneously combusted.” She sips softly from her coffee and sets it down. “Hence why I requested Sadik offer me a little more support,”

“What does this matter to him?”

“Other than being a mundane himself he is probably one of their largest employers on the continent. Before him, the best a mundane could ever hope for was to lease a shop, become a servant, or if they were smart: become a secretary or assistant. He and his beloved Vidya have put several of them through apprenticeships, Vidya is an architect who has funded and built several low-rent housing developments. He has a vested interest in this community and that it thrives in a world that is slanted in favour of us elementals.”

He couldn’t believe it nor see the use of such foolhardy altruism. Never in his few centuries has he understood what was advantageous about mercy for it had never elevated a creature beyond his rank or resources, there was no enrichment in wealth, no expansion of power. It was why perhaps he couldn’t blame Darius in the end for he was only acting on his true nature as much as Dominus could only act upon his. There would be no mercy from him in the event of his march upon Soleterea, save for only one.

“So it seems that the next pertinent objective would be to look further into these white cloaks and gold roses,”

“And I know exactly where to start,” Francine says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I just decided to post the rest lmao. At this point, we've reached mid-way and all the essential plot elements have been introduced as well as (most) of the important characters. You can feel free to speculate on wtf is happening because at this stage there are no wrong answers. I genuinely don't know what's happening either. 
> 
> As I mentioned a few chapters back I don't know if I'll continue to update on here since my pace has slowed considerably and I just feel like my prose is getting worse and worse but you can ask me for snippets on discord if you really want to. So, for now, this is really it. Hope you enjoyed the show.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me at [wordpress!](https://essenceofequinox.wordpress.com/)


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